Lunch isn’t for wimps

The Sunday Times Magazine | 5 Jun 2004

When Faith MacArthur was a child, she’d pluck chickens and pick potatoes during the harvest. She lived in “Cow Town” – Calgary, Alberta – in the Prairies. Her mother, a minister’s wife, would hang home-made noodles around the house to dry. Sitting on her mother’s knee, four-year-old Faith would pummel bread dough and make carrot curls for garnish. Now Faith, 42, is standing in her fashionable Notting Hill kitchen, knee-high in ingredients for soups: cumin, cinnamon, turmeric, ginger, chickpeas, chillis. Rows of saucepans are steaming on an industrial oven and scribbled, half-complete recipes litter every surface.

Faith is half of the husband-and-wife team behind the EAT chain of cafes.

• Food

Ever the trendsetters

Financial Times | 27 Mar 2004

Mattia Bonetti and David Gillare are preparing to show a new collection of furniture in New York and London. Caroline Phillips takes a peek.

• Homes, Interiors & Property

From California to Kensal Road

Independent on Sunday | 27 Mar 2004

For Sarah Stitt, 36, work is therapy. She had a miscarriage in 1994 and coped with her bereavement by painting a series of pregnant women, some with angels above. A year later, she became pregnant. But just five days after the birth, she was back in her studio, “hormonally insane” and painting to prevent herself going mad.

She first “found salvation in art” when she was at St Martins , aged 19. “I drank and drugged excessively,” recalls Stitt. “My rebellious youth ended with a nervous breakdown and painting was the only thing that helped me.” In 1993, she suffered a second breakdown. “I was severely depressed, suicidal and confronting the demons of my past.” So she “paid with paintings” for inpatient treatment in a therapy clinic on the Greek island of Skiathos.  

• Culture

From humble radiator to hot work of art

Financial Times | 10 Feb 2004

In 1982, the late Geoffrey Ward had a plumbing installation company. Camden Council insisted that he could not run his business from retail premises – without a window display, he could no longer be classified as a shop and would have to close.

Mr Ward had a zany designer radiator that he had imported for fun. He put it into the window of his Kilburn premises. People started asking to buy it – those were the days of the ubiquitous white panel radiator – so Mr. Ward decided to change jobs. He started to import sculptural radiators.

• Homes, Interiors & Property

Heston Blumenthal: The big cheese of the Fat Duck

Financial Times | 31 Jan 2004

The former debt collector has some extraordinary kit in his kitchen. A rotavapor machine that distills natural essences, a water and oil bath, a canister containing liquid nitrogen and a gleaming machine that turns purees into edible shaving foam. There’s a desiccator and pump to suck moisture out of chips, test tubes, overhead stirrers, mini filtration units and magnetic mixers. And now he falls delightedly upon Fishers laboratory catalogue. “Heat pads! You put them in a beaker of water with magnets underneath and it keeps it stirred. Can you see the vortex it’s creating?” he asks ecstatically.

• Food

Sandwich man has an appetite for spreading

Financial Times | 6 Jan 2004

Niall MacArthur, the founder of Eat, tells Caroline Phillips about his ambitions to expand his 26-strong chain beyond its base in London.

• Food