A touring luxury sleeper train with high-end gastronomy as its main attraction hits the rail network this summer, L’Enclume’s Simon Rogan directing the culinary traffic and executive chef Sven-Hanson Britt running the on-board galley. The Britannic Explorer is operated by travel and hotel group Belmond, owner of Le Manor aux Quat’Saisons, and will offer three-night […]
Chef Mark McCabe (left in picture), formerly of the Ethicurean restaurant near Bristol, is taking over the kitchen at Simon Rogan’s Henrock, overlooking Windermere in the Lake District. The Ethicurean, where Scottish-born Mark was part-owner, closed down in October last year, while Henrock, in Linthwaite House Hotel, is part of Simon’s Umbell group whose flagship […]
Former L’Enclume executive chef Tom Barnes is launching his first restaurant next year, in Manchester – with the blessing of Simon Rogan, his former boss at the Lake District gastronomic powerhouse. Skof will open next spring in the Hanover building, a terracotta-tiled former drapery warehouse built in 1904 by the Co-operative Wholesale Society in what is […]
Gastronomic stars from Greece, Italy and Portugal will line up alongside a roster of Britain’s top chefs for the 2024 edition of Obsession, the annual festival of chefs hosted by Northcote fine-dining hotel near Blackburn in Lancashire. Michel Roux Jr will cook with his daughter Emily at the grand finale on Sunday 4 February in […]
A group of leading Lake District chefs have come together for a week of dinners in a pop-up festival to raise awareness and funds in a campaign to save Lake Windermere from environmental disaster. Chefs 4 Save Windermere brings together a star-studded cast of the foodie region’s chefs headed by a team from Simon Rogan’s […]
Lake District chef Simon Rogan has extended his tiny ‘chef’s table’ London outpost – Aulis, off Dean Street in Soho – so it now seats 12 guests at a time, up from eight. The venue reopens next Tuesday, 30 May, with a new lounge for pre- and post-dinner drinks as well as a new natural stone counter. […]

Le Manoir aux Quat’ Saisons, Great Milton “I couldn’t take any risks for my wife’s 50th birthday weekend… so I placed my trust in Raymond’s impeccable hotel and restaurant… result: perfection!” M Blanc’s “magnificent”converted Elizabethan manor boasts a “dream location” in a picture-book village south of Oxford and, “if you want to spoil someone with […]

Clos Maggiore WC2 “You feel that love is in the air!” at this “very special” destination (yet again the survey’s No. 1 choice for a romantic occasion), especially in “the inner sanctum” – “the lovely glass-roofed courtyard at the back, hung with blossom, a roof that opens in fine weather, and with an open fire […]

The UK’s top 100 restaurants are revealed in Harden’s Best UK Restaurants 2018 published today – the country’s most comprehensive restaurant guide available in bookshops, with approximately twice the number of entries as The Good Food Guide. The guide hails London’s The Araki as the country’s best restaurant. The experience is “world class” and, at £385-a-head, […]