Sommeliers are not the new rock stars of food and drink – they’re the new DJs
Obsessive about their subject, the talent of the new breed of master sommeliers lies in shaping the mood and lining up seamless food and wine matchesNot so long ago, the phrase “star sommelier” would...
View ArticleWelcome to August’s Observer Food Monthly
In this month’s OFM, we have Giorgio Locatelli on his new cookbook and TV show, plus great Italian recipes, a profile of the bohemian food writer Patience Gray, and late-summer fruit recipes, including...
View ArticleFrozen in Time: Brigitte Bardot on set in Mexico, February 1965
Bardot sits down to soup with director Louis Malle and the cast of Viva Maria!On film sets today, the catering van will typically dispense bacon sandwiches and a sliver of quiche. In 1965, in Mexico on...
View ArticlePatience Gray: the wild, wild life of the cult food writer
On the centenary of her birth, we celebrate the blue-blooded rebel whose work, including Honey From a Weed, still influences the way we eat todayI had spent months thinking about her. Memoirs and...
View ArticleHonesty box – or dishonesty box?
The light-fingered might take advantage of the honesty box, but for the creative cook it provides a roadside recipe challengeOur garden is fairly dinky: no room, really, for veg, though at one end...
View ArticleNigel Slater’s late summer fruit recipes
Canteloupe gazpacho, nectarine tabbouleh and sausage wellington with plum sauce: celebrate the season’s bounty while you canLate summer is the high point of the fruit season. The berries and currants...
View ArticleChutney is great with cheese and gives stews a boost but there's only so much...
Autumn might be the season of abundance, but there’s a limit to what you can do with daily deliveries of courgettes the size of police truncheonsAutumn arrives, flaunting its abundance, and on my many...
View ArticleNadine Levy Redzepi: What do you cook for the world's best chef?
Nadine Levy Redzepi on cooking as a child, collecting her grandma’s recipes and being married to Noma’s René Redzepi – plus six beautiful family recipes from her brilliant new cookbookWhat to feed the...
View ArticleDarjeeling Express: the amateur cooks turned professional chefs
The kitchen at London’s Darjeeling Express is unlike any other. It’s home to a remarkable team of women who have never cooked professionally“Some people come for the food, some people come for the...
View ArticleOFM’s classic cookbook: Simon Hopkinson’s Roast Chicken and Other Stories
Nigella Lawson swoons over a collection of recipes that’s been her standby for 20 years. Plus six essential dishes from the book, including roast lamb with anchovy, saffron mash and passion fruit...
View ArticleAkram Khan: ‘My father hated my waitering – how I’d prance around’
The dancer and choreographer on rehearsing in the kitchen, snacking in the studio and getting his head around broccoliWhen five or six months old I was taken to Bangladesh by my father for four months...
View ArticleDo couples that cook together, stay together?
Are a couple’s eating habits a guide to the strength of their relationship? Novelist Kathleen Alcott reflects on lessons learned at the dinner tableThere is perhaps no clearer a sign that a man does...
View ArticleIt's elemental: does wine have a language problem?
When it comes to wine-tasting is the fashion for certain words, such as ‘minerality’, a help or a hindrance?There’s always a moment of self-consciousness the first time you use a fancy new description...
View ArticleLemn Sissay: ‘For the first time, I’m enjoying my life. I feel I have a purpose’
Life begins at 50 for the acclaimed poet, who’s overcome a traumatic childhood in care. Next up: more theatre and television projectsWhen I arrive at Benares, the Indian restaurant on Berkeley Square...
View ArticleFrom margherita to the controversial Hawaiian: which British supermarket has...
Restaurant critic Grace Dent’s rates the finest high-street pizzasContinue reading...
View ArticlePolitics and food: President Nixon in China, February 1972
Etiquette is the least of Tricky Dick’s worries at a state banquet in Shanghai, as he struggles with chopstick diplomacyNixon in China is John Adams’s famous opera, but it’s also a phrase, describing a...
View ArticleWelcome to September’s Observer Food Monthly
This month, we have Nadine Levy Redzepi’s practical, tempting family recipes, the story of amateurs turned professional chefs at Darjeeling Express, and Simon Hopkinson’s classic cookbook Roast Chicken...
View ArticleThe origins of clean eating
Why the fashion for restricted diets has been around longer than we might thinkPeople talk about orthorexia, an eating disorder that takes the form of an obsession with healthy food, as if it were a...
View ArticleNigel Slater’s autumn fruit and nut recipes
New apples, the last summer squash, early walnuts, late berries, and wild mushrooms – it’s a brilliant time to be in the kitchenSweet young mussels, crisp new season’s nuts, wild mushrooms, early...
View ArticleOFM Awards 2017: Best Producer – Bisous Bisous
For perfect macarons and more, forget posh Parisian patisseries – head to Bisous Bisous in Didsbury, the OFM judges’ Best ProducerBefore they opened their patisserie in the Manchester suburb of...
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