Peter Stringfellow: 'Who's left to drink with me, apart from Tom Jones?'
The nightclub kingpin recoils with distaste from the trend for abstemiousness in a 1995 interviewIn 1995 I was breakfasting, at 2.30pm, with the "King of the Clubs" at his apartment next to...
View ArticleEaster eggs and cakes taste test
The best eggs, cakes and hot cross buns tasted and rated by chocolate maker Willie Harcourt-CoozeThe Co-operative FoodLoved by Us Popping Candy Egg160g, £5, co-operativefood.co.ukThis is brilliant. Not...
View ArticleAnissa Helou: 'I don't like people who don't clear up as they cook'
The authority on Middle Eastern food is a stickler for cleanliness and her utensils and gadgets are meticulously arrangedAnissa Helou moved into her Shoreditch apartment, with large loft room, at the...
View ArticleEasy, delicious baking recipes from French pastry chef Fanny Zanotti
Lemon and blueberry madeleines, cherry clafoutis, chocolate fondant cake, ricotta and honey doughnuts, and moreI don't know for sure when it all started. Perhaps on that early morning of an endless...
View ArticleWelcome to the April edition of Observer Food Monthly
Cast your nominations for the 2014 OFM Awards, plus new cookbooks and a list of 50 things we loveOne of the brilliant things about being involved with Observer Food Monthly is having the opportunity to...
View ArticleSalt beef sandwiches, my dad and me | Jay Rayner
My father Des was always there to remind me that there are more important things than lunchIt is two days before my father's funeral, and I am sitting in a railway arch just south of Tower Bridge,...
View ArticleWhen is a crab not a crab?
A customer's crabby experience at a chain restaurant is no great surprise with food, as with everything, you get what you pay forIn the late 1980s, a new "delicatessen" opened near our house in...
View ArticleThe back story behind every wine label
What does the blurb on wine labels really tell you about the contents of the bottle?Few food and drink producers go to town on their back labels quite as much as wine producers. The labels typically...
View ArticleThe dough boy: cake, doughnuts and pudding recipes from Justin Gellatly
Recipes by the star baker who started at St John restaurant, including ginger cake, breakfast buns and his world famous doughnutsThis recipe was inspired by my father, William Neil Gellatly. By all...
View ArticleJustin Gellatly: I want to know that every loaf is perfect
The star baker on his new book and his brilliant doughnutsTry the recipes for yourselfBread Ahead, in Borough Market, is not yet a year old. But already business has exceeded even the wildest...
View ArticleKaty B: I was banned from the Brit school canteen
The singer recalls how singing En Vogue's Don't Let Go while standing on a table got her into troubleI grew up in a house in Peckham with two kitchens, but unfinished, like a building site, with no...
View ArticleEthical, organic, safe: the other side of halal food
With concern over animal welfare, supermarkets and restaurants under fire and fears about 'foreign ways', halal meat is food's most politically charged subject. But it's now a £1bn a year market in the...
View ArticleFrom plot to plate: chefs' kitchen garden secrets
Terence Conran grows food for Albion at his house in Hampshire. Ruth Rogers grows hers on the terrace of the River Cafe. Five chefs spill the beans on their kitchen gardens and share their recipesThe...
View ArticleSeven ages of a chef: James Lowe
'I love cooking, but I love restaurants more it's the whole package,' says the head chef at Lyle's, 34I didn't start cooking until I was 23, so I've always felt I was behind other chefs. After...
View ArticleSeven ages of a chef: Giorgio Locatelli
'I love the idea that someone can come to the restaurant pissed off and leave happy,' says the Locanda Locatelli restaurateur, 51My granddad opened a restaurant in northern Italy in 1963, the year I...
View ArticleSeven ages of a chef: Rick Stein
'I did have a very determined idea of making money. I was quite savvy about that,' says the restaurateur and author, 67I hardly worked in anybody else's kitchen before I worked in my own. I had six...
View ArticleNigel Slater's new season garlic recipes
Five ways with new season garlic, from hot, buttery chilli pesto bread to sirloin steak with aubergineThe new season's garlic is with us. The plump white bulbs, with their waxy skin flushed with green...
View ArticleSeven ages of a chef: Anna Hansen
'Happiness is beautiful food for happy guests and getting out by midnight,' says the head chef at The Modern Pantry, 44I'd studied business management back in New Zealand but arrived in London at 22...
View ArticleSeven ages of a chef: Albert Roux
'I've always seen food as my life, never wanted to change, even on the hardest days,' says the chef and restaurateur, 78My father was a charcutier; my grandfather and great-grandfather too. But when I...
View ArticleSeven ages of a chef: Joyce Molyneux
'I would definitely recommend it as a good profession for women,' says the former head chef at the Carved Angel, 83A life lived through the kitchen is something I would thoroughly recommend. I've been...
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