Food 2018 – Hibiscus, Northampton

Saturday, October 13th 2018 – Hibiscus, The Derngate Theatre, Northampton It’s true – if unkind – that when thinking of Northampton the last thing that comes to mind is fine dining, but with the county’s annual food and drink awards coming up in a couple of weeks, and the announcement of the Restaurant of the…

Food 2018 – Game Dinner, Le Gavroche, London

Monday, 8th October 2018 – Game Dinner, Le Gavroche, London I’m a massive fan of Michel Roux Jr and his cooking style, which is basically proper French cooking taken to the extremes of refinement, nothing flash, nothing “molecular”, nothing outré or extreme, just the best possible ingredients, cooked to perfection. However, as a consequence, it’s…

Food 2018 – The Butcher’s Arms, Greens Norton

Saturday, 18th August 2018 – The Butcher’s Arms, Greens Norton Greens Norton is probably the nearest village to where we live, and the local pub seems to have gone through some interesting times of late, changing hands more than once, before finally being bought by a consortium of villagers, who are now running it as…

Food 2018 – Bar Encore, The Rice Bowl, Towcester

Saturday, 28th July 2018 – Bar Encore, The Rice Bowl, Towcester Well, we made a second stab at Bar Encore in town, hoping to test out their food. The menu claims they do tapas, but the reality that evening turned out to be that there was some technical issue in the kitchen which meant there…

Food 2018 – Pairings, York

Sunday, 8th July 2018 – Pairings, York For lunch on Sunday in York we took Richard’s at Rascills recommendation and sought out Pairings on Castlegate. He said we’d like it. He was absolutely right. Some of the seats looked a bit “medieval instruments of torture” but we found some chairs rather than bar stools and…

Travel 2018 – Day 1, York

Friday, 6th July 2018 – York With the lure of Europe’s first pop-up Shakespearean theatre, the Rose, to tempt us north to York, we decided it was a good excuse for a short break in a city I used to know well after numerous trips there with school or for that matter with my parents….

Food/Drink 2018 – Bar Encore, Olive Tree, Towcester

Friday, 29th June 2018 – Bar Encore, Olive Tree, Towcester Friday night after a long day in a six-hour conference call and with the weather hot and dry as it has been for the last two weeks, I really didn’t fancy cooking dinner, so we headed out on foot to test run the new bar…

Travel/Food 2018 – France and Spain (but only a little bit)!

Saturday, 5th May/Wednesday, 23rd May 2018 – Home, Hull, Rotterdam, Epernay, Etoges, Troyes, Bordeaux, Pau, Pugnac, Blaye, Saint Emilion, Bordeaux, Pau, Saint Jean Pied de Port, Bilbao Gotta love a road trip! Here’s an approximate map of where we went… I had more to say that has since been added, but there was laundry to…