Restaurants, food, wine and shopping: Our writers on how things changed in 2021
My year in restaurants
Let’s hear it for the Brits (plus a splash of French sparkle), says William Sitwell
It was the most delicious glass of champagne of the year. Except it wasn’t a glass, but a tiny silver tankard, filled with vintage Pol Roger and served at a lunch at the wonderful St Jacques in St James’s given by the champagne house. I’m ruined. I can never drink decent champagne in anything else.
Uh oh. Worst restaurant of the year was a battle between the disappointment of the re-opened Langan’s in London and the utter ghastliness of Alice at the Randolph in Oxford – both reviewed in rare moments of being unable to be positive about restaurants in 2021. But the prize goes to Langan’s, as they do know better, and will – please – get better…
Two box schemes out of thousands stood out for me. One came from an exquisite little place run by chef Amy Elles called the Harbour Café in the seaside village of Elie in Fife, and was stuffed with langoustine, lobster, sourdough and potato salad. The other from a new Somerset organic farming business called Westcott Organics… their ribs of longhorn, OMG. My best lunch of the summer: the snaily, garlicky, happy place that is George Pell’s L’Escargot sur Mer. Now, aside from Fishers Gin, the best reason to visit, if not move to, Aldeburgh.
My year in food
Looking for inspiration in recipe-writing can be close to home, says Diana Henry
As Covid made foreign travel a hassle I holidayed in Britain and in an area (Kent) right on my doorstep. The trip was planned – as always – around restaurants and I felt as if I’d found the pot of gold that had always been at the end of the rainbow.
Why would you miss Italian trattorie if you could sit at Sargasso in Margate on a warm evening eating a plate of parmesan fritters, the sun throwing gorgeous light through your glass of rose? Then there was the finest sourdough, cod with clams and a bottle of English Silex Blanc at Angela’s, a plain and lovely fish restaurant a stone’s throw from the sea and dinner at the Rose in Deal. Why did I waste so many years not going to Deal, with its stripes of sea, sky and shingle, its French wine bar (with a properly interesting wines by the glass) and superb butcher’s, the Black Pig? En route back I went to the Goods Shed, the farmers’ market-cum-restaurant in Canterbury. I’d never managed to visit. It’s a real farm-to-table place – think yellow courgettes with herb pesto then cherry tart for pud – and I brought the flavour of Kent (strawberries, greengages and cheeses) home with me. If I’d ventured inland there were even more places to enjoy. For me it’s now Sicily, Provence, Catalonia or Kent.
My year in wine
Pop goes British wine – or is that the sound of a can opening, asks Victoria Moore
With so many trips abroad cancelled, and English and Welsh wine in the ascendant, 2021 has been a huge year for vineyard tourism at home. We have enjoyed eating at winery restaurants, taking discovery tours of vineyards in the shires, relaxing at musical evenings among the vines, browsing in vineyard shops and even sleeping over in treehouses close to wineries. The enthusiasm for homegrown wine has been phenomenal, with some UK wine producers experiencing such high demand that their tasting tours for the whole year were already fully booked by early summer.
This has also been the year of the quality wine can. And no, that’s not an oxymoron. Wine in a can has been gaining traction for some time, and now it’s on fire: the perfect solution to the desire for smaller and more portable serves. Canned wine hits of the year include the Curator (a South African brand in three colours, all of them good); a just-released range by Michelin-starred chef Tommy Banks; and Mirabeau’s “Pret-a-Porter rosé to go”. If you’re sceptical then I suggest trying some. And, if you can’t imagine wanting to drink so little, note it’s handy to open an aperitif white can and follow it with a red.
My year in food shopping
We changed, and so did what we could buy, says Xanthe Clay
This was the year we stopped taking food for granted. It started with last year’s shortages, of course: who could have imagined in 2019 that plain old flour would become a rarity? But, as supply chains struggled with processor and driver shortages, it became clear that the problem is more entrenched than a brief, pandemic-induced crisis. It first hit home to me when a chance turn down a supermarket aisle brought me face to face with shelves that should have held food stacked with toys, while others were as bare as Soviet-era food stores.
The security of our food chain wasn’t our only concern. “Climatarian” became the new “flexitarian” as we turned to products with a lower carbon or water footprint. Vegan food has become so mainstream that some retailers stopped putting meat “analogues” in a special section and let them go head to head with pork and beef in the chiller cabinet. Ultra-processed foods (UPFs) have taken over from sugar and carbs as the new food baddies: it’s not just what’s on the label but how it’s been made that matters.
We’ve embraced no-waste cooking wholeheartedly. Carrot-top pesto rocked on pasta, and nutty, crunchy cauliflower leaves and broccoli stems finally got the credit they deserved. Meanwhile, it was hard to find an artisan-made chutney or kimchi that wasn’t made with wonky veg otherwise destined for the dump. We had a lot on our plate this year, and we made the most of it.
