Ottolenghi is by now a bit of a culinary cliché. I don’t mean that in any bad way – just that it has been so talked and written about that it seems as familiar as soft falling rain. In case you haven’t heard of it, the phenomena that is Ottolenghi is a set of four food shops in central London run by Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi. The shops are in Islington, Belgravia, Notting Hill and Kensington; the Islington branch is also a full restaurant, the Belgravia and Notting Hill branches have small communal eating-in areas at the back of the shops and Kensington which is the smallest shop serves take-out food only.
Category Archives: Food/Wine
Coffee in London: Ottolenghi
Filed under Coffee, Food/Wine, London, Restaurants/Cafés, Travel
American Grown by Michelle Obama
When I heard there was a new, well newish, book out called American Grown by Michelle Obama I was always going to buy it. Michelle Obama is one of my style icons and I much admire the work that she does through her Let’s Move campaign to combat childhood obesity in the USA.
Cambridge Lunch: Hôtel du Vin
The Hôtel du Vin on Cambridge’s Trumpington Street is a stone’s throw from the Fitzwilliam Museum and from the city’s many dizzingly magnificent college buildings. As you may know the Hôtel du Vin is a small boutique hotel chain with hotels in twelve other UK cities (Birmingham, Brighton, Bristol, Cheltenham, Edinburgh, Harrogate, Henley-on-Thames, Newcastle, Poole, Tunbridge Wells, Winchester and York)
Filed under Food/Wine, Hotels, Restaurants/Cafés, Travel
Snapshots of my Saturday
I often, thought not invariably, work on Saturdays. However, today was a work-free Saturday so I decided to go into town, town is as I mentioned before, is what the denizens of Dublin call their metropolis despite the fact that it’s a city.
Filed under Dublin, Food/Wine, Restaurants/Cafés, Shops/Shopping
O’Brien Chop House
Tempus fugit at an undeniably scary speed, like a spry sprinter dashing furiously towards a finishing line. Time tethers us to the present while allowing us to glance backwards and to idly wonder about an uncertain and not foretold future. Time has a way of blurring and misting its own empirical chronological lines so that what happened just a few short days past often seems like centuries ago. A case in point is my recent fleeting trip to Lismore and the lunch I had in the O’ Brien Chop House while I was there; it was only three weeks ago yet seems to belong to a time out of mind in a far distant long forgotten temporal realm.
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Filed under Food/Wine, Ireland, Restaurants/Cafés, Travel
Saint-Antonin-Noble-Val
The weather was glorious in south-west France during my short sojourn there. It was lovely to feast my eyes on azure blue skies part-filled with flossy white clouds, to feel the warmth of the sun on my back and to experience a succession of rain-free days. I was staying in Lisle-sur-Tarn a pretty medieval bastide (fortified) town between Toulouse and Albi. If the name Lisle-sur-Tarn sounds familiar perhaps you read Tracy Chevalier’s The Virgin Blue which was set in the town.
Making Orange Wine
It rained hard in these parts all day today. The distant hills were smudged with mist and the low steel grey sky felt oppressive. The short time I spent in the sun-kissed South of France, in May last year, now seems centuries ago. Occasionally as an antidote to dull days I recall the clear blue skies, the shimmering azure sea and the colourful food markets of Provence. One memory of the holiday has hooked itself crochet like into my mind; it is the taste of the orange wine, which is a speciality of the region. Now that Seville (marmalade) oranges are in season I decided to make a batch of Vin d’ Orange.
♥ Baking: Bread
I love the glorious aroma of freshly baked home-made bread. However I have limited bread making skills and I am rather scared of using yeast so other than occasionally making focaccia I tend to stick to baking breads that don’t require it. The yeast free spelt bread pictured above is very easy to make; it is just the thing when you want to cut back on your wheat intake and it tastes delicious. The recipe comes from ‘Cornucopia at Home: The Cook Book’.
♥ Mango and Walnut Scones
Am I alone in sticking to a very limited choice of foods to eat for breakfast? I usually select either the healthy option of a bowl of porridge with yogurt or the not so healthy alternative of a scone. In an effort to make some tiny changes to my breakfast routine, when I was baking a batch of scones for the freezer I added walnuts and dried mango instead of the usual couple of handfuls of sultans. I try to avoid dairy as much as possible but I have never been able to find an acceptable substitute to use for baking, if anyone knows one please let me know.
♥ Coffee in Dublin//Four: Sixty Four Wine
It’s always good to know where to find a decent cup of coffee, so when I am in the Sandycove, Glasthule or Dun Laoghaire areas of South Dublin and in need of a caffeine pick-me-up, I head to Sixty Four Wine. The owner Gerard Maguire has woven together three different but related strands to come up with a successful business. Sixty Four is principally a wine emporium, so the front of the shop carries a large selection of vinous treats at every price point, in the middle there’s an artisan food section and at the back an interesting café (serving coffee, teas, breakfast and lunch) and a fine wine cellar.
The coffee is good and always arrives with a wedge of Valrhona chocolate on the side. The decor of the café is eclectic; a tiled floor, table tops made from the sides of wooden wine boxes, seating replete with comfortable cushion, quirky antiques, a bust of James Joyce in one corner and artificial lighting augmented by flickering tealights. The mix is curiously appealing and the café has a post-modern feel (I mean that in a very good way); the sort of place you wouldn’t be surprised to come upon a skilled scribe scribbling by the glow of candlelight.
The owner Gerard is living the mantra ‘do something you love and you will never have to work a day in your life.’ He started his working life as a policemen and then became a lawyer with his own practice. He is a long time lover of wine, so when he had a health scare several years ago he decided, as he waited a week for his test results, that if all was well he would work from that day on at something he loved, the news was good and Sixty Four Wine was born. Gerard is studying to become a Master of Wine; he is entering the third year of a seven-year long slog.
When I was talking to Gerard I couldn’t resist asking a would be Master of Wine to recommend a couple of wines at the €15 level and here’s what he suggested; a Godello (that’s a white wine, Godello is the grape variety, like clothes grapes go in and out of fashion and Gerard reckons that Godello is the coming thing) by the Spanish producer Rafael Palacios and Clos des Trias a bio-dynamic Grenache dominated red from the Ventoux.
Note: Sixty Four Wine is at 64 Sandycove Road, Glasthule, Co. Dublin and the web address is http://www.64wine.com
Filed under Coffee, Dublin, Food/Wine, Restaurants/Cafés
Just Add Attitude
Just Add Attitude 