The British fixation with the weather is quite a marvellous thing, helping us come up with small talk for every awkward pause while also lending itself to a touch of national stereotyping. Part of this is the desperate desire to take advantage of hot weather at the drop of a hat. This also gives us…
Being a restaurant inside another business such as a hotel or department store can be a bit of a tough gig. There’s an underlying assumption that if you’re a ‘business in a business’ then you’re something of an afterthought, leading to restaurants in hotels and so on being unfairly overlooked in some cases. The latest…
It’s not exactly a secret that the North of England is packed with some fantastic food producers. From pasta to seaweed via cheese and veg’ there’s a huge variety of world class produce to get stuck into both literally and metaphorically. If you take as much pleasure from food as I do then it’s no…
Assumptions about what’s impossible have been blown away in the last 12 months. Roll out a newly developed vaccine in double quick time? Sure. Find the cash to pay huge swathes of the country to stay at home for a year? No worries. Get the general public to buy into avoiding personal contact with their…
With fingers crossed and a healthy slug of vaccine for all, we seem now to be creeping slowly out of the strictures placed on our liberties over the last year or so and able to re-embrace what were once simple pleasures such as nipping to the neighbours for a cup of tea inside. Undoubtedly some…
Throughout 20 years of living in York I’ve tried to be proactive in looking for new ways to explore and interact with the city that I’ve come to love, with treats such as the Snickleway Tour of York and more recently the Treasure Hunt York Tour proving their worth. Without getting too much into talk…
It’s starting to feel a little bit like some venues have become a touch more interchangeable while we’re stuck with outdoor dining. Open sided white marquees are ubiquitous across pub gardens throughout the land now, while tipi style constructions have been springing up at more up-market destinations offering us respite from the worst impact of…
It looks very much like dining out in 2021 will, for a good portion of it at least, mean exactly that. Even after we’re permitted to return to the warm embrace of a restaurant’s interior, I can see many people retaining a preference for outdoor dining as long as the British weather can be tricked…
Some of the at home experiences I’ve tried over the last year have provoked wildly varying perceptions of value amongst my peers, some relishing the opportunity to indulge at home and some assuming that savings hadn’t been passed on and that prices were too high. One box that’s available nationwide comes from Opheem in Birmingham…
Recipe boxes are one of the services that has seen consumer appetite increase while we’ve been spending more time at home. The major presences such as Hello Fresh and Gousto have entrenched themselves at the fore of the market while other more niche players leverage restaurant brands to replicate dining experiences in the home. Sitting…