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Author's posts

Review: Le Cercle, Bourges

Nice fish

What is it with French fine dining and puddings? Sorry, desserts. Are there other food writers out there properly bemoaning the complete lack of decent pastry chefs in French provincial 1 Michelin star restaurants? Or am I just dismally unlucky to have had crap desserts in the last five French provincial 1 Michelin star restaurants …

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Wine tasting in the central Loire

Sancerre

The Loire changes as you head upstream. Down near the sea it’s awash with Muscadet, head upstream and it becomes a broad flow of Chenin Blanc, but keep going and eventually you’ll be swimming in pure Sauvignon Blanc. This is the grape of Sancerre, Poilly-Fume and Reuilly. And Menetou-Salon but I’ll come back to that. …

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Review: The Fordwich Arms

Fordwich Arms

Kent is super-beautiful. Seriously got some of the most stunning countryside in the UK. I’m using the word bucolic here, and I’m meaning it sincerely. So many of the villages are staggeringly pretty. Visit Chilham, Ickham, Wickhamburgh, Fordwich and Lenham, then tell me it ain’t true. Actually there’s a mistake in that list: Fordwich isn’t …

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Review: Alchemilla, Nottingham

Alchemilla

Alchemilla has one of the most stunning dining rooms going. It’s an old coach house beneath the pavement in front of the splendid old town houses that the coaches once belonged to. Their maitre d’ showed us the photos of the place when they took it on: there were tree roots growing through the ceiling …

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Review: Folium, Birmingham

Platin' up at Folium

I think perhaps the most satisfying thing a food blogger can do is review a restaurant “before it was famous”. It is for me, anyway. My list of great finds includes: Casamia, Ynyshir and The Black Swan. Particularly Ynyshir, which I got to before any of the major newspaper critics or any other bloggers. In …

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