I thought I’d get tired of the subject. After all, I’ve read so many articles about it, listened to commentator after commentator go on about it and, of course, we’ve all winged to each other about it on numerous occasions. It’s that scourge of the modern society: mobile phones. We all hate them but nearly […]

Here’s a riddle for you. What sounds like a dog but smells like a fish? Well it’s the Scarborough Woof so named because it’s got four legs, is covered in hair and digs holes in the beach. Actually, I made up those last three bits. But there is definitely a fish colloquially known as the […]

I use to work for an energy giant; one of those companies frequently vilified for being uncaring about our environment and shareholder-pressured in their quest for ever greater profit. But the division I worked for wasn’t trying to sell more oil or gas. Rather, it was making its money by investing in energy efficient technology […]

I was at a function in our restaurant some weeks ago where I was invited to give a talk about the restaurant, how we source ingredients and my general thoughts about food. I got on my usual soapbox bemoaning the lack of cooking lessons in school and got some sympathetic nods from the 20 or […]

Over the last 25 years or so, I’ve been lucky enough to have spent many happy holidays in rural France, sampling the various regions’ wines, their local dishes and making the French feel superior when listening to me attempting to speak their language. At first, as far as my hosts were concerned, none of this […]

Without meaning to sound like a London cab driver, I had that Jonathon Porritt in the restaurant some time ago. For the uninitiated, he’s a well known environmental campaigner, a previous chairman of the UK Ecology Party (now known as the Green Party) and senior advisor to governments on all things green – in an […]

I’m careful about who we use to supply our restaurant. There are certain meat suppliers in the North East with whom I wouldn’t begin to associate ourselves as they don’t match the standards and values we’ve set. We couldn’t do what we do if we didn’t believe in our suppliers and the raw materials we […]

  “How can you rear them and then eat them?”, I’m frequently asked. It’s true, I get a tremendous amount of joy out of rearing a few animals; not least the pigs. They’re such fun, intelligent and affectionate animals that I’m frequently to be found inside the electric fencing of their paddock, sitting on the […]

Dinner parties. Don’t you just love them? However, for some hosts it seems to be a sort of torture. I reckon they really started to become popular in the eighties. And of course I blame Delia, because she was the one who gave those who liked to cook the confidence to cook for others. She […]

I remember an absolutely awful story from my teens where a student at a local college had crashed his motorbike and was in a serious way. People who’d seen the accident rushed to help him and, in a bid to make him comfortable, removed his helmet which, unfortunately, resulted in him dying. That’s why Formula […]