Category: Food & Drink

Summertime

The Mall is decked out for the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting; Lancaster house is sealed off and has much tentage and Lord Lieutenants and their deputies are run ragged greeting delegates at airports.

Easter Sunday

The Elia Hotel is owned by George Digridakis whose grandfather played an important role in the Resistance after the German invasion in 1941. Today we are en fête and will celebrate Easter under his gaze.

Fox, Food, Fops

It was raining much too hard to take a photograph of this fine bronze of Charles James Fox erected in 1816. I was walking across the north side of Bloomsbury Square on my way to the British Museum and their Charmed Lives in Greece exhibition.

Booth

No doubt you make a Pavlovian association between Booth and gin. Well the link has been broken since production ceased in 2017.

Boots

“It was a lonely land then, the vast frontier held by the last scattered remnants of the once great armies that fought the Civil War. To such as these, all but forgotten, doing a dirty, thankless job, without reward or glory, the army was a way of life, the only one they knew or wanted.”

William Pickering

I have been given a bottle of port by a generous friend who found himself unable to walk past Berry Bros & Rudd without making a purchase. It is a twenty-year-old tawny labelled William Pickering – not a port house with which I am familiar.

York Scratchings

During WWII the domestic staff employed by the Dorrien-Smiths on Tresco were diverted into war work. The family have leased the island from the Duchy of Cornwall since 1834. The Mrs D-S of the day was asked if this wasn’t rather inconvenient. Not at all she said, I dress up in the maid’s uniform and… Continue reading York Scratchings

Holland Park

Lord Holland joins us today because of my invitation to lunch on Tuesday. Don’t be silly, he din’t ask me, he died in 1840. But here’s a clue; before lunch we walked around Holland Park.

River Views

If you google “expensive fish restaurant Barnes” up comes Rick Stein.  By its own admission, Rick Stein, Barnes,  has limited tables with views of the river but maybe you are lucky enough to secure one.

Chacun à Son Goût

Usually readers here are, more or less, on the same wave length as me. At lunch yesterday a friend said that she doesn’t read if my daily dose is about money and another said that she gets incredibly annoyed if it’s about politics.  That’s absolutely OK but what about this?