Prashad has had a lot of hype. I approach hype with a healthy amount of scepticism. I’m good at scepticism – it’s a speciality – and the world of food is littered with things that don’t quite live up to the mark, that aren’t quite as good as they claim to be. For every stellar [...]
The food game is a vicious business, littered with spectacular failures and well-intentioned enterprises that don’t quite last the distance. Restaurants come and go, sometimes suddenly, sometimes after a period of stagnation, slipping into an unstoppable downward spiral of cut corners, tatty interiors, tired service and crappy food. Harry Ramsden’s at Guiseley typified this type [...]
You know those times when a restaurant creates a bit of a buzz about it? How it gets mentioned often on twitter and facebook and blogged about endlessly? That makes me nervous. There are plenty of places that don’t live up to their hype, plenty of places that just have good PR people cooking up [...]
Remember the other week I wrote about trekking all over Rome to find a pizzeria late at night? The same thing happened the next evening, too, when we yomped across the city to a closed-down restaurant, complete with tumbleweed rolling past the door. Luckily, I’d idly canvassed some twitter opinion on decent restaurants when I [...]
Costa have started to claim that they’re voted the UK’s favourite coffee shop. I don’t believe that for a second. I’ve had their coffee, after all. Those canvassed have probably never been to the likes of Laynes, La Bottega Milanese or Opposite in Leeds, or perhaps Bold Street Coffee in Liverpool. Bold Street Coffee is [...]