Archive
Dawn of the Dead. Westfield Stratford City opening day
The recession is over?
It’s a bit eerie at Westfield Stratford, thousands of people all walking in the same direction and with the same expression on their face. ‘Day of the dead,’ says M glumly as we watch from behind the safety of our security barrier, He’s right the resemblance to zombies is undeniable, although to be fair most zombies wouldn’t be seen undead in a shell suit and many have better complexions.
It’s opening day at Westfield Stratford City. Some pedants have argued a city has to have a cathedral and Stratford doesn’t but they are missing the point, it does have a cathedral or at least a large temple of worship and it’s this new shopping centre.
The faithful have turned up in massive numbers, are they all skipping work or are they all unemployed? If the latter how will they afford to shop here? Questions unanswered when Boris Johnson clambers shabbily to his feet to deliver a characteristically up beat and witty opening speech. His jokes about Chaucer may go over a few people’s heads but at least he doesn’t patronise the crowd with jargon-filled rubbish the way Ken would have done. Read more…
Brasserie Joel, London
First Floor, Park Plaza Westminster Bridge, City of London SE1 7UT www.brasseriejoel.co.uk
Rather moody
The Park Plaza hotel is south of the river, but only just. Run full tilt out of the foyer and you’ll be in the Thames seconds later and soon bobbing past the London Eye.
South of the river but not of The South, the hotel resolutely turns its back on the area and instead looks toward Parliament across Westminster Bridge. In fact approach as we did from the rear and you find yourself forced to detour around endless pelican crossings before making your final assault on the front door.
Even then it’s not over, the escalators packed with happy tourists take you up to a modernistic foyer (i.e. it looks nothing like one) with no sign of, or signs to, the restaurant. It is in fact a sharp left and left again down a long moodily lit corridor toward a tall reception desk where a guardian coolly appraises your approach while you will yourself not to do a Miranda pratfall.
And yet in the restaurant it’s friendly and family, guests from many nations are eating and there are even small children too. Yes the mood is Hotel, but the food is something else. Back in the 1990s Joel Antunes was chef/patron at Les Saveurs, now sadly gone to the great griddle in the sky, and back then we flocked to eat there. Now he’s back in London and thanks to him this is no ‘hotel restaurant’. Read more…
The Drift, Heron Tower, London
Heron Tower, 110 Bishopsgate, EC2N 4AY. www. thedriftbar.co.uk
The entrance to Drift is around the side of the Heron Tower, but it’s worth going into the main reception to ‘ask directions’ just to get a whiff of that new building smell and stare in awe at the fish tank.
In fact it’s not so much a tank as Europe’s largest privately owned aquarium. It’s so massive you expect a heavily tied up James Bond to suddenly drop into it , and then a shark to appear looking peckish.
After security has firmly set you on the right path you find The Drift itself. A new London restaurant, triple-heighted, with a bar on the ground floor and the restaurant on the first, it’s clangy and modern but not unpleasant. The mix of seating, with tables of various heights plus large refectory ones that seat eight, means it caters for all pay grades in a pleasingly egalitarian manner Read more…
Waldorf Salad: In the garden with Executive Chef Lee Streeton
Chef’s rubber Croc shoes seem at odds with the mud we’re tramping through, but then so are his chef’s whites. ‘I’ve got big plans,’ says Lee Streeton Executive Chef at the spanking new Syon Park Waldorf Astoria Hotel while waving his arms around. ‘This land is mine!’
As veg patches go, it’s already a sizeable one. Courgettes are massed in yellow-flowered profusion. ‘We cook those, they go quick,’ Lee says charging up and down the veg beds in the dwindling light pointing out other plants and herbs growing furiously well in his deep organic beds, all sheltered from the worst of the weather by the hotel’s walls and close presence.
Many chefs these days claim to be pulling produce from the restaurant garden, but if you get a chance to peek outside their restaurants you have to wonder who is kidding who. A patch of herbs and a tomato plant do not a vegetable garden make.
Lee is certainly capable of keeping his customers fed from his. A cynical non-foody might say that’s because his dishes are rather tiny. One tomato can probably make ten plates the way Lee does it. I’m being a bit naughty though because, seriously, Lee’s dishes are examples of fine dining restraint and quality and are about textures and tastes combined with seasonality. Read more…
Simply red. Totally tomatos in Alicante
Mind the step
Anyone stumbling slightly the worse for wear into the lobby in the Hospes Amerigo Hotel might be forgiven for thinking the DTs had set in. Not pink elephants but red globes are everywhere; they’re piled in heaps next to the reception desk, they’re lined up like tubby soldiers on every available spare shelf, they lurk by the lift doors and they offer themselves as trip hazards on the marble stairs. There really are a lot of tomatoes hanging about in this chic converted monastery in Alicante old town.
The reason is simple, Hospes Amerigo is launching a new holiday idea for foodies who also love the sun, ‘Discover the Tomato’. For three days guests can immerse themselves in a local product; seeing how it’s grown, how it’s harvested, how it can be cooked and most importantly how it can be eaten. Read more…
Meat the experts at A La Cruz
What’s a Greek urn? About 3 Euros an hour. What’s an Asador? Ah now you’re asking. Think a controlled bonfire, not the one your dad used to make from collected leaves and a squirt of petrol, the one that always made a satisfying ‘whump!’ as it set your eyebrows on fire. No this is very different.
Out on the Argentine plains, explains John Rattagan, his bald head shining with perspiration in the fierce heat of the kitchen, an asador is a big wood fire where freshly killed and prepped lambs and other meats are mounted on ‘crosses’ and cooked over its flames. John and his partners have brought this concept to EC1 with restaurant A La Cruz where an asador made of polished steel sits proudly in customers’ view behind thick plate glass. Read more…
Everybody needs good neighbours
And it was all yellow.
Its glut time. The neighbours know it and hide behind the curtains when they see me trudging up their path with a heavy carrier bag. ‘Oh no, it’s Nick with more veg!’
I don’t want to suggest my neighbours are burger eaters, the sort of people who think anything green is going to be bad for them, it’s just that you can have too much of a good thing. Or at least they can.
At first the neighbours are genuinely pleased to get a bag of organic veg. They peer in with obvious delight and make encouraging noises. Than as the allotment gets up steam the cries of pleasure seem a bit tinged with exasperation. Read more…
Here we go round the mulberry bush
Sam Harrison is walking around a sun blasted garden in ‘leafy’ Chiswick looking like Macbeth after a particularly heavy night with the in-laws. His hands are running blood red; juice drips down his arms and gorily spatters onto the grass. He is a very happy man.
We’ve been up the Mulberry Bush, not around it, to gather the massive harvest of berries from a tree that’s at least 150 years old. Its limbs languidly sprawl all over the place, like an Old Etonian on a sofa, and under the canopy of leaves the berries are fruiting heavily. Read more…
L’Avant Port, Ile de Re, France
8 Quai Daniel Rivaille, St.-Martin-de-Ré, Île de Ré, France. Tel: 00 33 546 68 06 68
‘16 Euros to cross a bloody bridge?’ I shouted incredulously at the mec manning the toll booth as he gazed back impassively. No doubt the sight of a middle-aged Englishman having an apoplexy over the entrance fee to the Île de Ré was becoming rather familiar to him. He shrugged Gallicly. It wasn’t his fault that this time last year 16 Euros was equivalent to about £10 while now it was almost exactly £16. ‘Blame Gordon Brown and the people who voted Labour,’ he advised, or something like that. I couldn’t hear him anymore because of the roaring noise inside my head. ‘This had better be one hell of a lunch,’ I grunted to no one in particular as I ground the hired Peugeot’s gears furiously in a personal statement of defiance to Sarkozy.
Once over the bridge and bouncing over the most speed humped roads in Europe I tried to relax while my head regularly cracked against the roof. The French don’t build speed bumps the way we do – in order to penalise plucky small car owners while allowing fat 4×4 drivers to zoom along with impunity – no, these are the full road width and with sharp edges. Go more than 20mph over them and you can kiss goodbye to both your suspension and your car hire deposit. Given that my tiny Peugeot 107 had cost £170 for a week, I could ill afford any more costs or delays on this particular jaunt. My destination was the north end of the island, the capital port of St Martin de Re, and it was already hard going what with the hundreds of cyclists that infest the island at this time of year. Read more…
Beer and Bratwurst in Nuremburg
The bangers are banging
By Air Berlin it’s about a 100 minute journey today from Gatwick to the German city of Nuremburg. Back in 1944 it took the Allied air force a little bit longer but when they left, an hour later, 90% of the city was smoking rubble.
Today the only smoke is that from scores of beer kellers cooking the legendary Bratwurst. It swirls around the restored mediaeval streets and surges out of open windows, along with the sound of laughter and clinking glasses of beer.
Nuremburg has not forgotten its unhappy past but it cheerfully looks to the future. A multicultural city that is proudly steeped in history, it welcomes visitors from across Europe, all keen to sample the uniquely German approach to life and beer. Read more…
Nick Harman 