Food 2018 – Natura, Helsinki

Thursday, 29th November 2018 – Natura, Helsinki On our first night in town I’d booked for dinner about as close to the hotel as I could get, based on recommendations from both Michelin and the White Guide. For our first dinner I’d gone for Natura, which surprisingly isn’t in the White Guide, but that is…

Food 2018 – Tight, Copenhagen

Wednesday, 31st October 2018 – Tight, Copenhagen This was a day when I let my colleague choose where we went for dinner, though to be fair he had requested that we go to Kødbyens Fiskebar the first night and I’d left him to his own devices on the Tuesday when I went out with a…

Food 2018 – FIAT, Copenhagen

Tuesday, 30th October 2018 – FIAT, Copenhagen On the middle of three nights in Copenhagen I’d arranged to have dinner with a friend who I had only ever met online, Maria. Although she’s Swedish, she works in Copenhagen (we know each other through the online community based around a weight loss website weightlossresources.co.uk, that we…

Food 2018 – White Horse, Kings Sutton

Saturday, October 20th 2018 – The White Horse, Kings Sutton With the increasing shortage of quality restaurants in our area, every so often we strike it lucky, and find a gem. Now that the Roade House, the Vine House and Cameron’s Kitchen are all gone, we need a high-ish end establishment for the more special…

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 Hopping Hare, Duston

Tuesday, 11th September 2018 – The Hopping Hare, Duston This was one we’d been meaning to try for a while, having heard good things about it on the grapevine. There was a rumour the chef had once worked at the late lamented Roade House, and that he was in good form here. We were keen…

Travel 2018 – Hotel Shiskinn, Snovjanka, Ukraine

Tuesday, 28th August/Friday, 31st August 2018 – Hotel Shiskinn, Snovjanka, Ukraine Having spent four days at the hotel, I’m more than a little amused by some of its claims to “Western” service levels and such like, so I’ll try and be fair because if you do find yourself in this part of Ukraine, I suspect…

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…