Category Archives: restaurants

Lunch at Silo

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(1) Doug door

Founder and Head Chef Douglas McMaster opening Silo’s door

 

Light the fireworks and pop the champagne: Of Slender Means returns. The inspiration that broke my six-month social media hiatus? Lunch at Silo – Brighton’s newest and hottest lunch spot.

Apart from a visit to a raw food cafe in San Francisco (the place of dreams) in 2009, I am not sure I have ever left a restaurant feeling so wonderfully light and so resoundingly happy to have spent my money there. In both concept and execution, Silo – which describes its food as “pre-industrial” and itself as the first zero-waste restaurant – is a dining miracle. The simplicity, sustainability, and creativity permeating its ethos are so close to the ambitions of this blog (though Silo founder and head chef Douglas McMaster – former BBC Young Chef of the Year, with St John and Noma on his CV – admittedly has the upper hand in culinary talents and compost systems … ) I felt the restaurant had almost been created for me. Just reading the menu on Silo’s website had my mouth watering – freshly caught fish, fermented brown rice risotto, beetroot juice, seaweed salsa … Continue reading →

Supermarkets again

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We went away to the North German coast for a few days. It wasn’t a remote spot, though you might have thought it from the deserted beaches and windswept sand dunes. The surrounding infrastructure – discount supermarkets, cafes, restaurants – suggested summer saw busier days.

As is standard on holidays with small children, when we first arrived we went to the village’s only supermarket (a Netto) to stock up. Our list was modest: apples, bananas, cheese, butter, milk, bread, yoghurt, and jam. Mostly, we thought, we’d eat out.

Despite the simplicity of our culinary ambitions, Netto proved disappointing. Call me a snob, but I don’t believe not sure I have ever been in a supermarket with fewer things I might consider buying. Wherever we turned, we found junk. There are no other words for it. Continue reading →

Returning to the straight and narrow

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Victorian Supper Table

I was at a birthday party a few weeks ago, and, after a couple of civilised hours chatting, sipping wine and swaying elegantly (or so I liked to think) on the dance floor, I found myself alone beside the buffet table. Despite having eaten a balanced evening meal only a few hours before, I was inexplicably and irresistibly drawn, in my two-glasses-of-wine haze, to what seemed to me to be a resplendent cheese board and accompanying tapenade. I started modestly – just two small slithers of cheese, one thin slice of baguette and a spoonful of tapenade. So far so good.

But with no-one there to observe my greed, I soon returned to the table and re-filled my plate more generously. The food was tasty, but far too rich for a midnight snack. It was on my third and greediest trip, as I plugged a large chunk of bread slathered with cheese and tapenade into my mouth without even putting it on my plate that I had a moment of clarity: no longer an interested taste, this had become a fully fledged gorge. I wiped my lips and stopped there. Continue reading →