Tag 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 →

Lavish dinners in moderation

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January

Poor dark, cold January has become a time for rather miserably hiding away and cutting back on life’s excesses – almost like an entire month of hangover – following a lavish Christmas. But I find it hard to advocate the practice of such punishing abstinence.

This excessive detoxing seems too short-term and painful to me. What if your best friend’s birthday in January, or indeed your wedding anniversary? What if you get to February so fed up of your steak-for-dinner diet that you go on a three-day baguette-feeding frenzy? Or you celebrate your month of dryness with a whisky drinking night out on the town? Surely, anything so far removed from your normal life is almost doomed to failure, or, at best, only very fleeting success. Continue reading →