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 – Murrays, Whittlebury Hall, Whittlebury

Saturday, 14th July 2018 – Murrays, Whittlebury Hall, Whittlebury We hadn’t been to Murrays for a while, but figured it was due the repeat visit we’d been promising ourselves, and so we booked a table, hoping for more atmosphere than last time (we went on the Saturday of the Moto GP meeting and were completely…

Travel 2018 – York, Day 3

Sunday, 8th July 2018 – York Sunday morning saw us not in a tearing hurry, but with a vague plan to get a close look at the rest of the city walls, and possibly pop into a museum, before stopping off somewhere for lunch. It was a fairly flexible sort of plan, and we were…

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….

Travel 2018 – Hoteliers! We Need To Talk!

Travel 2018 – Towels! Dear Hoteliers! We really need to talk about towels! Many of you can now relax because you do provide good quality, decent sized towels (and please note that plural!) for your guests. Which is as it should be. They’re paying good money, often very good money, to stay in your establishments…

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…

Travel/Food 2018 – French Road Trip, Day 16, Pau

Sunday, May 20th – Day 16, Pau And so we came to our final day of racing. Some lunatic had decided to schedule the first of the Formula Ford races at stupid o’clock, or at least 08:00 on Sunday morning. I mean, who does that to people? We decided that we really, really couldn’t miss…