In the first of a small series, London-based dabbler Luke Honey, maître d' of The Greasy Spoon Blog, resurrects a venerable cookery magazine, complete with a retro recipe that has long since fallen out of favour... Not that long ago I managed to save a complete set of the 1968 Cordon Bleu ... Read More...
Dabbler Soup
Food and drink
Christmas is but one week away, and where would a good dabbler be without a spot of wassailing. Before we set off wassailing incorrectly, we thought it prudent to consult Epicurean Luke Honey from The Greasy Spoon Blog to find out what wassailing actually is... Here we come a-wassailing Among the leaves ... Read More...
Will Lowe keeps it real (whilst also distilling rather wonderful gin - you can learn more, and find the perfect Christmas gift for the boozer who has everything here). Real ale is enjoying an undeniable resurgence. As we have seen across many categories, including food, wine and spirits, people are now ... Read More...
Having successfully defended blended whiskies, Henry turns his attention another enemy of certain drink snobs: Aussie wines... A couple of years ago before I was an enormously well-respected wine writer with my own column in a prestigious magazine, I replied to something written by Tim Atkin on which wine region or ... Read More...
Single malt fans who turn their noses up at blended whiskies are missing out, argues Henry... When one reads about whisky it is invariably single malts that get all the attention. Whisky writers go into raptures at the latest ultra-peaty monsters from Ardbeg or Laphroaig. Malts like these are drinks that ... Read More...
Luke Honey, proprietor of The Greasy Spoon Blog, takes a grand tour to Venice, and one of the world's most famous bars... I'm not sure how many "Harry's Bars" there are in the world. Quite a few, I expect. There's that famous pub in Paris, there's the late Mark Birley's smart ... Read More...
Wine is the ultimate recession-proof leisure pursuit, argues Henry Jeffreys. Not least because it contains alchohol... A wine merchant opened up near my flat in East London about three years ago just as the recession was taking off and people were losing their jobs. They didn’t offer much below £10 a ... Read More...
Photograph: Local_man I like Hertfordshire. If you don't know England, this is an understated county of meagre size, found to the north of the London suburbs. Here the urban sprawl gives way to a rolling landscape: golden wheatfields, red-brick shuttered cottage ornées, church spires and tarred clapboard barns. Very Biedermeier. It ... Read More...
Henry provides a very handy catch-all phrase for when discussing wine with people who know more about it than you do... From watching Father Ted, we all know that in a religious discussion you can’t go wrong by saying: ‘that would be an ecumenical matter.’ That way you will always sound like ... Read More...
The popularity of Coronation Chicken- like the monarchy- has had its ups and downs over the years. Tom Parker Bowles is not a fan, tweeting to his followers: "Coronation chicken...isn't a dish of celebration, rather punishment for sins of a past life". In retort, Luke Honey of The Greasy Spoon ... Read More...
