Cutting Cheese on Moxon Street
‘All top gastronomy writers survive on Milk Thistle – you really must start taking it,’ advised Dacotah Renneau, the venerable PR from leading Prosecco producer, ‘Bisol’. In addition to Mark Hix’s tenderly cured salmon, Richard Haward’s fragrant native oysters and La Fromagerie’s artisan cheeses, Dacotah’s tall flutes offered revitalisation. They helped untangle the tightly-bound cliques of food

Roasting Guests
THERE is, as the adage goes, no such thing as a free lunch. Owing to the intensity and expectation of organisers, I found a recent meal at Borough Market’s British restaurant, ‘Roast’ occasionally hard to digest.Invited by England’s largest wine producer, ‘Chapel Down’, who are based in picture postcard, Tenterden, Kent, seven professionally-inclined foodie carrier pigeons were sat strategically.

Lisbon, Part Three
UNLIKE the majority of summits and symposiums, Bacchus’ ferment was a constant bedfellow at the European Wine Bloggers Conference. Held at the ‘VIP’ Grand Lisboa, an angular, orange pen for drab suits, with pebbly feng shui bits and a bar menu boasting ‘bee fillet’ (the sting was in the price) I hope our conference room made other guests jealous. Pallets of crystal glasses stretched across

Off the Rails
PRESSED against the tinny fuselage of train number two – the Metro – we darted under Paris from the elegant Gare du Nord to jagged-looking, ‘Fritz Lang’ like hell, Gare Montparnasse. Our next transport, announced by a hectic, tick-ticking departures board, would cut to Basque border town, Irun, best known for a festival which recreates the Peninsula War. With perfect timing, the TGV slipped the

Dawn Bubbles
Andrew, author of ‘Spitton.biz’ forced me to go to the wine bloggers conference in Lisbon. I’ll be honest – the idea of actually paying to take a seat amidst 150 self-important, klaxon-loud alcoholics held all the appeal of acupuncture through the heart (which I suffered last week). He dressed it up, of course. We would start at St. Pancras Champagne Bar and then weave through four countries on