Category Archives: Europe

A magical meal at Giffords Circus

Posted on by under Europe, food

Run away to the circus? I feel that I very well might after eating at Giffords circus.

img_4390_18551034158_oI’ve had some odd dining companions in my time but these people are particularly unusual. A clown, an exotic ringmaster (with a mysterious accent) and a charming chap  of ‘restricted growth’ and these are just the people nearest me. All around the tent are all kinds of exotic creatures and all, like me, are falling on the sharing plates of food with cries of delight.

This is Circus Sauce, a restaurant tent attached to a mobile kitchen; two large showmans’ wagons painted in Giffords Circus colours. The tent is candlelit, fitted with large oak tables and decorated all around with Giffords vintage tapestries and odd eclectic items. It is, on this warm summer’s night in the enchanted grounds of Chiswick House, a fabulous place to be. Continue reading →

A very Swedish food festival

Posted on by under Northern Europe

Lured by the promise of fresh local ingredients, star chefs and some rather good beer, I head to Skanör in Sweden for a beautiful food festival by the sea.

hut2The wind in my face is so strong I can feel my hipster bike attempting to go backwards under the pressure. I stand up in the saddle and apply more motive power to the pedals as on either side of the causeway brown cows eye me impassively while flocks of strange seabirds circle overhead

I have to get a move on, Magnus Nilsson of restaurant Fäviken fame has a pop up food truck selling his take on hot dogs up ahead at the food festival, a collaboration between chefs, restaurants and local farmers and producers, and I am keen to get a look and taste before the crowds build up. Continue reading →

Fraq’s Lobster Shack

Posted on by under food

55 Goodge Street, London, W1T 1TQ www.fraqslobstershack.com

2M5A8902I must be getting old, the first thing that hits me on entering Fraq is the noise; I can barely hear what the girl in charge of opening the door is saying to me. It isn’t so much the people making noise as the music, it’s club-loud. This may be a good idea in the evening when the majority of customers will probably be under 25 and on their way somewhere exciting, but at lunch it has us having second thoughts straightaway.

But undaunted we  push through a crowd of young men in beards, and young girls in those still popular ‘cute’ bobble hats, to a table somewhat larger than a napkin, We’d ordered at the cooking counter, it wasn’t a  difficult moment; Maine Lobster Roll or Calamari Club?  Fries and/or fried courgette strips?  A craft bottle beer? Continue reading →

The Gin Palace

Posted on by under Europe, food

A tour of the remarkable new Bombay Sapphire distillery in Laverstoke. It’s a place of taste and eco responsibiity and rather good gin

IMG_3607The gin isn’t actually blue. This is something I discovered much to my disappointment when I was first ordered gin in a pub. It’s just the tint of the glass bottle. But then Bombay Sapphire was always smart with its marketing.

IMG_3525Today as Bombay Sapphire’s ’Senior Brand Ambassador’ Sam Carter picks up a bottle to make a cocktail, it literally lights up electric blue ‘It’s a little gadget stuck to the bottom,’ he explains. ’You pick up the bottle and it comes on. Great for dark bars!’ Now that’s branding. Continue reading →

The names James, Le Saint James

Posted on by under Europe, food, Northern Europe

High on a hill, Le Saint James Hotel in Bordeaux offers unique style, fantastic views, superb food and a cookery school as well. 

IMG_3154We started calling it the ‘Le Saint James Bond’ moment, the moment after waking up that I pressed the button to raise the blind at the end of our bed.

With a cheerful whirr all four meters or so of blind would creep upward to slowly reveal a 180 degree view of Bordeaux spread out to the west below. The early light shining onto the taller buildings the cars with their headlights on, blue lights of emergency services silently and purposefully charging down the autoroutes. Magical.

IMG_3350The room, like all the rooms at the Le Saint James Hotel, is designed around the bed and the bed is designed around the view. Up here in the village of Bouliac, known unsurprisingly as the Balcony of Bordeaux, everyone gets a good view but lucky guests in their beds have the best view of all. Continue reading →

Avast there! Aboard Quantum of the Seas, the biggest floating food palace ever

Posted on by under cruises, Europe

If you’ve always thought a cruise was not for you then it may be time to think again, after all where else can you get to eat in 18 different restaurants only a short stroll from your bedroom? 

ARM2A stomach-boggling variety of eateries is only one of the attractions of the just launched Royal Caribbean cruise ship Quantum of the Seas, the third biggest cruise ship in the world at 347 m and one able to carry 4,000 passengers.

DODGEMS2Onboard are the first dodgems at sea, the first trapeze, the first skydive simulator – Ripcord by iFLY – the first Jamie’s Italian, the North Star – a stomach fluttering glass pod that swings out and over the ship to give you a helicopter view – and the Bionic Bar where two hyperactive robots log your order and then go into blurred motion at the optics, the ice dispenser and the mixer taps before finally giving it all a good shake and sliding your refreshing beverage towards you. Continue reading →

The fat of the land

Posted on by under Europe, food

Pigs and parmesan aren’t enough for the people of Emilia Romagna, Italy, they want to have their art and eat it too. Nick Harman heads out to sample a bit of both.IMG_2912‘I’m going to London tomorrow.’ enthuses the Italian man at Due Platani , a trattoria in the countryside just outside Parma, ‘I’ve got a reservation at Chiltern Firehouse after three months’ wait!’ Well you don’t want to be a downer on anyone do you, but I had to bite back a ‘why bother?’ I mean I had just eaten a superb meal of local, seasonal produce such as pumpkin ravioli, so good other chefs come for miles to eat them, in a room joyfully filled with people of all ages and with not a WAG or scenester in sight.

IMG_3086It was followed by pasta ribbons mixed with a perfect balance of duck ragu, enough to add flavour to the fresh pasta but not swamp it, then some guinea fowl with spicy sweet mostarda, and had ended with my being invited to see a huge mound of fresh ice cream come surging out of an ancient gelato machine before it was rushed to eagerly waiting tables. You don’t get that in West London. Continue reading →

Don’t save it for Sunday

Posted on by under Europe, food, sherry

Jetting into Jerez to taste a lot of sherry and to put aside some prejudices

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The dark interior the of sherry bodega in Jerez stretches away to what seems like infinity. On each side black painted barrels are stacked in Goth splendour three barrels high. Outside, even in September, the sky is a brilliant blue and the temperature is enough to make pedestrians hug the shady side of the street and drivers turn up the aircon full blast.

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Inside it smells musty and mouldy and of sherry. It’s an aroma redolent of Christmas and Sunday dinners, and for anyone of a certain age it’sHarveys Bristol Cream that immediately springs to mind. Which is apt, as this is where it comes from Continue reading →

Pepper Big

Posted on by under Europe, food, Northern Europe

Down in ‘Fannet’ food has taken a space age turn. Nick Harman visits the UK’s biggest greenhouse complex to find how our red, yellow and green peppers are produced.

pepmainI can’t get rid of it; ‘This is Planet Earth’ by Duran Duran keeps looping around my brain as we wait for security clearance to enter the world of Thanet Earth. Damn those catchy 80s popsters and their irresistible ‘hooks’.

I soon lose the beat though as we round a corner and I get my first sight of the massive greenhouses covering the rough equivalent of four Heathrow terminals, or 40 football pitches if that helps. Very, very big, is perhaps the best way of putting it.

IMG_2437Before the greenhouses fell to earth all this land in Thanet, the bit of the UK that includes Margate, Ramsgate and Broadstairs, grew brassicas – cauliflowers mostly -which apparently ‘smelt a fair bit.’

Now four clean, bright and odour-free greenhouses occupy the space instead. They stand on compacted earth with as little concrete as possible used in their construction. This is what modern farming looks like; efficient, virtually waste-free, ecologically as sound as possible and with no mud or muck about. Continue reading →

The world’s biggest buffet

Posted on by under Europe, food, Southern Europe, wine

Eat for England.  Les Grands Buffets, Narbonne, France

Remorseless eating machines | The world’s biggest buffet

I agreed to it for a laugh, really. “The world’s biggest buffet”? Well that surely had to be a barn-door target for some snarky reviewing.

At first we couldn’t get to the place to even mock it from the outside. Instead we sped with increasing impatience up and down the fast two-lane on the industrial outskirts of Narbonne, trying to find a way in. Massive signs advertised furniture stores,car exhaust fitters and flooring warehouses, but the only way to access the area seemed to be to drive the wrong way around a roundabout and then floor it down a one-way street against oncoming Renault Twingos.

So we did that and made our way on foot across an airfield’s worth of tarmac to an enormous building that also seemed to house an ice-rink or a roller-rink. It was hard to tell: it was closed and dark, just like every other “grand surface” in the area.

Les Grands Buffets

Continue reading →