Flawless food from a French master June 21, 2010 FLASH back five years. I’m in the new Covent Garden Market with Alexis Gauthier, then the chef patron of Gallic jewel Roussillon, researching a feature. It’s 4AM and Gauthier is getting very excited indeed. Never mind the fact that it’s pitch black and freezing, even under the market’s neon lights – no, he has just [...]
Flawless food from a French master June 21, 2010 FLASH back five years. I’m in the new Covent Garden Market with Alexis Gauthier, then the chef patron of Gallic jewel Roussillon, researching a feature. It’s 4AM and Gauthier is getting very excited indeed. Never mind the fact that it’s pitch black and freezing, even under the market’s neon lights – no, he has just [...]
Carluccio’s sees profits drop March 31, 2010 Restaurant group Carluccio’s has seen profits before tax for 2009 drop to £4.7m from £5.6m, after the company faced a challenging year. Revenue climbed by eight per cent to £69m from £64m it posted the year before. During the year Carluccio’s opened 44 new stores across the UK, up from the 38 stores it opened [...]
Room with a brilliant view May 24, 2010 Paramount Centre Point, 101-103 New Oxford Street WC1A 1DD. Tel: 020 7420 2900, www.paramount.uk.net Cost per person without wine: £45 IN the food’n’drinkosphere, the days of exclusivity seem to be numbered – just last week, private casino Les Ambassadeurs opened its restaurant, The Milroy, for the hoi polloi’s lunchtime pleasure. Bureau, another swanky bar/lounge that [...]
The celebrity chef bringing peasant food to the City March 29, 2010 I’M like a snail,” drawls chef supreme Raymond Blanc in a French accent that, 38 years after he arrived in the UK, remains as textured and ripe as a perfectly aged Camembert. “I’m stuck in my shell, and can only move very slowly.” The reason for Blanc’s despondency is a fall he took at his [...]
Blanc goes bland in the Square Mile April 19, 2010 Brasserie Blanc 60 Threadneedle Street, EC2R 8HP Tel: 020 7710 9441 Cost per person without wine: £26 IT has the name Raymond Blanc attached, but don’t be thinking Brasserie Blanc has anything to do with the French celebrity chef’s haute cuisine flagship, Le Manoir aux Quat’ Saisons in Oxfordshire. Brasserie Blanc is a chain of [...]
FOOD & BOOZE NEWS May 10, 2010 M. ROUX GOES TO WESTMINSTER As the post-election fall-out rolls on, Michel Roux Jr (below), chef patron of London’s most famous French restaurant and feared critic of Masterchef’s professionals edition has moved into politics – sort of. Yesterday saw the opening of the Le Gavroche maestro’s new project, Roux at Parliament Square, in a grand [...]
Restaurant Group serves up profit rise March 3, 2010 RESTAURANT Group – which owns the Garfunkel’s and Chiquitos chains – saw a slim rise in profit last year. Revenues were up five per cent to £436m while pre-tax profits rose two per cent to a higher-than-expected £50m, the company said yesterday. The company has weathered the recession without the massive discounting seen by some [...]
SUMMER SIZZLER April 28, 2010 AFTER a winter as long, cold and trying as the one we’ve just experienced, any excuse to wave it goodbye and welcome the arrival of warmer times should be celebrated – and there’s no better way of doing that than hauling the old barbecue out of the garden shed and firing it up. Offering a [...]
Honeypot homes are luring buyers up to Stanmore June 10, 2010 STEPPING off the end of a Tube line seems like entering a vacuum to most Londoners. One imagines a tangle of motorways, perhaps. Some cows. A few car parks. Visitors to Stanmore might be surprised. Stanmore is a place whose name anyone who regularly rides the Jubilee line will have heard, but the town is [...]