Publication credits for food and drink
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The Guardian, Financial Times and a weekly food page for The London Paper over the last two years. My column focuses on chefs, cooking, food trends, seasonality, new products and specialist shops, markets and small producers.
Click on any of the thumbnails below to read examples of work.
We’re a cynical lot, us Londoners, so when an ethically righteous, unnervingly evangelical, £2.8 billion “natural” foods retailer from America sets out to seduce us, we require serious persuasion.
Whole Foods, owner of nearly 200 stores in the US, yesterday opened a three-floor sexy beast of a store in Kensington High Street, with plans to roll out the chain across Britain and Europe.
Step through its Art Deco doors and you enter a temple to food the size of Wembley, full of jaw-dropping displays: mountains of parmesan, nests of ostrich eggs, arty arrangements of tomatoes. You can pick from more than 1,000 wines, 400 cheeses and 20,000 grocery, natural-remedy and bodycare lines, be charmed by 550 staff, graze at 13 mini restaurants, and pay at 28 busy tills.
It’s all pretty god-damn irresistible. But when the wonder has worn off, will we be back for seconds? You’ll spend far too much. But it’s not because the prices are outrageous. They’re similar to those at Waitrose (down the road) or M&S (almost next door), but Whole Foods is a master of temptation and shopping to a budget is all but impossible.
Customer service? Awesome. The American team leaders are almost too nice for moody Brits. Get ready for feel-good smiles, a nervous tick of referring to small suppliers as "friends" and product knowledge far superior to high-street rivals. Ethically the firm is streets ahead, with cutting-edge standards for animal welfare, sustainable fish sourcing and a policy of "no trans fats, no artificial flavours and no preservatives".
Waste is composted or recycled, and the compost sold on. Plastic wrapping on the bulk deliveries is sent off to make plastic bags. There are some top-notch British suppliers – Neal’s Yard Dairy cheeses, Secretts’ micro leaves, smoked salmon from Forman and Sons, Jules and Sharpie Suffolk chutneys and relishes, and Pieminister pies – with more in the pipeline. It’s not all organic. Many of the fruit and vegetables, for example, are conventionally grown and imported from Europe.
But should we really be shopping at Whole Foods? London has a dazzling number of smaller independent and specialist shops. The company claims to "sell spices just like a great Moroccan market", but it’s not a street or farmers’ market and never will be.
Personally, if I want to buy Bombay mix, it’s from my local Indian corner shop; parma ham from the Italian deli; halloumi at the Turkish grocers, where it costs £1.50 compared with £2.29 in Whole Foods. Whole Foods’ shelves offering "Meal Solutions" (a.k.a. takeaway food) betray the corporate heart of the business. And as for a pint at the Bramley Pub upstairs, it’s a sleek bar, not a boozer. So will Whole Foods be a success in Kensington? No doubt it will.
