The Restaurant at Cowley Manor

Our Man on the Ground | 18 Jul 2014

The Elder Daughter and I arrive an hour late – after driving into several hedges. The satnav doesn’t like the idea of going there and keeps ordering us imperiously to “perform a U-turn when possible” on roads the size of my little finger. When we get mobile reception – which isn’t often – we call to say we’re running late. Which might be as good a way as any to alert the staff to our table reservation. Wrong.

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Spice of Life

Country & Town House | 24 Jun 2014

The fashion for top-notch food continues apace, so Caroline Phillips learns her goosegrass from her ganache with the help of some culinary superstars on the UK’s best cookery courses

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So to Cliveden and its eponymous new restaurant by André Garrett, formerly head chef at Galvin at Windows.

Our Man on the Ground | 25 May 2014

Under the Livingstone brothers, the new owners, the dining space has been moved from its humiliating basement home to the ground floor overlooking the Parterre – traditional gardens with formal beds, box hedging and yew topiary. Beyond that, as far as the eye can see is an unadulterated 19th century country view, not a house in sight, and the distant mist rising from the Thames.

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Season’s eatings

Lusso | 18 Nov 2013

Christmas? Pah! It’s hard to forget the childhood memories of my mother getting up in the night to baste the eight-hour-shrivelled turkey. And those moments of sipping festively hot diesel – otherwise known as cherry brandy. Things are little different these days. Have you ever tried following Delia’s culinary countdown, particularly on the day itself? I’d rather eat my own spleen. Even a boil-in-the-bag kipper tastes better than the fifteenth turkey serving of the month. And find me someone who says he likes Brussels sprouts, and I’ll show you a liar.

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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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Hot in the kitchen

Country & Town House | 24 Mar 2010

Looking to improve your culinary skills? Why not take a course to impress your family and friends? Caroline Phillips tries her hand at bread-making Shepherd’s Bush, antipasti in Mayfair and dinner party fare in Oxfordshire.

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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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I like to go against the grain

Financial Times | 17 Jan 2004

Top chef Rowley Leigh starts his FT cookery column this week and tells Caroline Phillips about his robust, refined style.

• Interviews,
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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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The big cheese of the Fat Duck

Financial Times | 1 Jan 2004

Caroline Phillips meets Heston Blumenthal, the Willy Wonka of modern British cooking, and samples his distinctive brand of innovative and investigative cuisine.

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