The mix: great meat, sourdough buns, a few clever extras like chorizo and sweet potato toppings or mint relish, and a kitchen where you can see them doing it properly. Nahm, Halkin Hotel, Halkin Street, London SW1 (020-7333 1234)David Thompson has just been named Outstanding London Chef in the Tio Pepe Carlton Restaurant Awards, beating off home-grown competition from, among others, Gordon Ramsay. One of the world’s authorities on Thai food, Thompson moved from Sydney and quickly made his mark. Eating at Nahm means entering a whole new world of skill and flavours; an unforgettable experience. Pied ?erre, 34 Charlotte Street, London W1 (020-7636 1178)Shane Osborn is the first Australian chef to be awarded two Michelin stars.
You don’t have to come from Down Under to cook lamb with aubergine pur?and red pepper sauce as perfectly as he does, but maybe it helps give the restaurant a more relaxed ambience than it had in the past. Other complex but unfussy dishes like foie gras terrine with duck leg confit are pure, precise and pretty well French.The Providores, 109 Marylebone HIgh Street, London W1 (020-7935 6175)From the land where sheep’s milk and manuka honey flows, Peter Gordon is New Zealand’s unofficial food ambassador in the UK. His cheffing partner at the Marylebone restaurant and caf?s another New Zealander, Anna Hansen. Together they defy the fusion sceptics, deftly combining south-east Asian, Spanish and other ingredients into exuberant platefuls.
NZ lamb, of course, but with Swiss chard, horseradish polenta and tomato chilli jam.. OUR CHICKENS have got themselves a bad name It’s not anything the chickens themselves have done It’s what we’ve done to the poor fowl. Mass-produced as cheap protein, many of them look anaemic and taste of nothing. No wonder the solution seems to be to smother them in Chinese or Indian sauces How they’re reared doesn’t bear thinking about
Our chickens have got themselves a bad name It’s not anything the chickens themselves have done It’s what we’ve done to the poor fowl.
How they’re reared doesn’t bear thinking about.
French poultry farming puts most of ours to shame. They leave the birds to do their own thing, take pride in the quality of the maize they feed them, and make sure they look attractive to customers. They don’t sell them trapped in clingfilm, but wrapped in waxed paper so the skin can breathe.In France there are established poultry labels that are universally recognised, like wine appellations Best known is Poulet de Bresse. The birds are the blue-legged Gauloise breed, and at an early age are given a metal leg ring which stays on as proof of their pedigree when you buy them. They’re priced in keeping with their aristocratic status; expect to pay about £15 a bird, and in this country their habitat seems to be places like Harrods or Harvey Nichols in London.Other breeds can be found in good supermarkets and butchers outside posh neighbourhoods like Knightsbridge, however.