Restaurants
Colonial cringe
Gymkhana is a fashionable Indian restaurant in Albemarle Street. It was, according to its natty website, ‘inspired by Colonial Indian…
Dear Mary
Q. I have been trying to get an apprenticeship in fashion for over a year without success. I just had…
Disney matter
The Disney Café is a gaudy hell on the fourth floor of Harrods, Knightsbridge. It is adjacent to the Harrods…
My little plutocrat
Rextail is a restaurant for billionaire children, such as Richie Rich. Its owner, Arcady Novikov, has already opened a restaurant…
Vienna without the Austrians
Fischer’s is Austria made safe for liberals, gays, Jews and other Untermenschen riffraff, because it is a restaurant, not a…
Escaping the Fringe
The Edinburgh Fringe Festival: the city is full of glassy-eyed narcissists eating haggis pizza off flyers that say Michael Gove:…
Rebooting the Snail
L’Escargot, or the Snail, is a famous restaurant on Greek Street, Soho, opposite the old Establishment club; the oldest French…
Dinner with the paparazzi
Here then is Gatsby’s house, after an invasion by the Daily Mail. It is called the Chiltern Firehouse. It is…
Old Harry’s game
Harry’s Bar is a dull pale box. This is remarkable in Venice, which is a hospice for dying palaces, held…
End of the rude
Wong Kei is a mad Chinese restaurant on Wardour Street, Chinatown. Until recently it was considered the rudest restaurant in…
Oxford blues
It is now two decades since I lived in Oxford. I was then a drunk and lonely puddle of a…
Your problems solved
Q. It’s only April and yet I am being emailed by parents who have already taken charge and are drumming…
A far cry from Chelsea
London House is in Battersea, which some people call South Chelsea, but is more East Wandsworth to my mind; or…
Dinner with the editors
Moro (‘moorish’ or ‘sexist’) is a Spanish restaurant on Exmouth Market, near the bones of the old Guardian and Observer…
Multi-story dining
The Fable is three floors high and two days old, a monster newly hatched on the Holborn Viaduct; deep below…
Dear Mary
Q. Over New Year I stayed with a man who combines being a generous and exciting host with a punctilious…
Dear Mary
Q. I have a tattoo the length of my forearm and am worried it will alienate my new boyfriend’s parents…
Meet the parents
Woolley Grange is a child-friendly country house hotel that seems, at first, entirely monstrous — a grey Tudor house in…
Proper kosher
A restaurant in a synagogue may be too mad even for this column but we are Jews, so why not?…
No more steak tartare?
Stricter food rules won’t make you any safer – but they could ruin many small restaurants
Eating the Shard
What to say about the Shard that isn’t said by the fact it is 1,020 feet high and looks like…
