The Potting Shed

Our Man on the Ground | 18 Aug 2014

The Royal Triangle is like a sort of reverse Bermuda Triangle – so instead of aircraft and ships disappearing under suspicious circumstances, tasteful Highgrove daisy grubbers, maple-handled planting trowels, traditional Sussex trugs in which to collect your earthy organic carrots and wooden apple crates simply appear. Just like that. And everything is painted that sautéed sage colour. It’s like living in the brain of Lady Bamford of Daylesford fame, the high priestess of this sort of aesthetic.

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Picasso, Caviar and Mojitos

Lusso | 11 Nov 2013

Sometimes you find a place so good you don’t want to tell people about it. The Samling is one such. But its restaurant has just won a Michelin star, so it’s too late to keep schtumm…. The hotel can accommodate 24 lucky guests – in rooms and six cottages – in a gabled 1780s house in Windermere, the Lake District. All set on a steep hill and in 67 acres of gardens with giant genera, lavender and hemp. You may inadvertently walk past ‘reception’ – simply a bureau desk in the hall – but soon enough you’ll encounter the young, smiley, ever-solicitous staff. They’re doing great things. Since changing hands in 2011, The Samling has been snapping up awards. (‘Best boutique dining hotel in the world’ type monikers.)

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The boil-in-the-bag dinner party

Financial Times | 22 May 2005

Online food delivery services are expanding into ‘gourmet’ ready-made meals, with mixed results, writes Caroline Phillips.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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