Lannan bakery opened in Edinburgh in 2023 and has had a long queue outside ever since. It’s easy to see why: young pastry chef Darcie Maher creates viennoiserie such as delicately folded pain suisse, perfectly glazed croissants, plump custard slices and more besides that are sublime. Not just worth the queue (25 minutes on our visit), but worth the detour to Stockbridge on the northern edge of the New Town, if you’re not already there. #lannan #viennoiseries #scottishbaking #edinburgh #stockbridge
Thank you to my cousin Linda Caird for reminding me about the highs and lows of Scottish baking today. High point: the bridies. The raised eyebrow: the strawberry tarts. I used to love these as a child. Now I wonder a) in May? b) that colour! #Forfar #scottishbaking
Peter Carty’s novel ‘Art’ details the tipping point when Hoxton went from being the hangout of Young British Artists to a hyped Hipster hellhole. I can tell you exactly when this happened - winter 1998-99 - because, mea culpa: it was me who wrote the reviews of Hoxton Square Kitchen, Great Eastern Dining Room, Shoreditch Electricity Showrooms, Lux and other seminal venues that alerted Time Out Magazine’s huge readership to their existence. Shoreditch had previously been terra incognita for reviewers, but within weeks every weekend DJ and coffee barista was donning old skool trainers and affecting a silly hairstyle to head to Hoxton. Sorry. Anyhow, Peter’s novel - a fiction, but unnervingly close to the truth - is an unflinching portrait of an art scene that appeared ready to implode, yet exploded. It’s a compelling, disturbing, darkly funny read. £10.99 in Waterstones, or from Amazon if you must. @art_thehoxtonnovel
España oculta: a week in Cádiz. One third of Andalusia’s sherry triangle, a timeless city on the edge of the Atlantic. Tapas bars aplenty, and the heavy scent of orange blossom in the streets. There is a a brightness in Cádiz that feels less like light than memory—salted, wind-stirred. The city sits upon its narrow tongue of land as though it had drifted there by accident, a pale geometry of stone and sun surrounded on all sides by the Atlantic’s persistent glitter. Nothing in Cádiz seems hurried; even the air, scented with orange blossom for three short weeks, moves with a certain leisure, as if it has known empires come and go and found them all, in the end, rather temporary.
Mercado El Fontan, Oviedo, retains the charm of a mid-19th-century covered market with its cast-iron pillars and glass. Sensitively refurbished in 1994, it has an organised calm quite unlike most other traditional Spanish markets. It’s a great place to pick up Asturian dried beans for fabada; bacalao (dried cod); bottles of cider (sidra); chorizo and other cured meats; blue cheeses from the Picos de Europa; and fresh fish straight out of the Cantabrian Sea. The adjacent Casa Ramon tapas bar is the place to head for refreshments. #oviedo #mercadoelfontan
Confiteria Rialto, established 1926 in Oviedo, northern Spain, has changed little in a century. It serves traditional Asturian pastels, plus viennoiserie as a nod to the Grand Cafés of Central Europe. Egg yolk and almond paste feature strongly in the conventual desserts (originally made in convents); for example in the carbayone pastries. Every morsel is flawless. But come here to soak in the atmosphere of the high-ceilinged and pillared dining room; pink linen tablecloths turned for each group of customers; waitresses with uniforms of hats and pinafores; ladies with bouffant hair and lap dogs. Spanish gold. #confiteria #confiteriarialto #oviedo #asturias #carbayones #conventualsweets
Two weeks ago I started seeing patients with the same new ailment: sore throat or hoarse voice, malaise, rapid pulse, low oxygen sats, low fever. These turned out to be the newish Nimbus and Stratus variants of Covid. Days later, I tested positive myself and have been off work for much of a week. The lesson: if you feel unwell, TEST to check if it’s Covid. (Superdrug have a deal on: less than £2 per kit.) Today was my first day back at work, and my first face-to-face patient was a 95 year old man presenting with breathlessness. The second lesson: WEAR A MASK if you even think there’s only a chance it might be Covid. You might just save a life. #covid #roehampton #nhs
