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Welcome back to Insta Stories, a column examining the London restaurant scene through the often-problematic medium of Instagram. This week’s filter is fish in a barrel.
News of the week
To Cornbury Park, Oxfordshire, for this year’s edition of the only festival called Wilderness that takes place in the manicured grounds of a stately home and its surrounding estate. The formula should be familiar enough by now: a range of genuinely legit food trucks during the day, a star-studded roster of chefs by night, all it of accompanied by tastefully selected wines and craft ales. Even the ecstasy is artisanal and single-origin, probably. In short: if London’s food scene felt curiously muted this weekend, it’s because 97 percent of it was standing in a field getting wrecked to Robyn.
Hot Items successor of the week
For anyone looking to move on from hot items: presenting The Bapped Meat Diet.
Stealth invasion of the week
The brutally tough economic climate has put paid to any number of aspiring restaurants in the past couple of years; there are, to put it lightly, a lot of vacant shopfronts out there at the moment. By next year, it looks increasingly probable that most of them will be occupied by a branch of Doughnut Time, the hawker of gaudily vajazzled baked goods that somehow already boasts four branches in some of London’s most desirable areas. With product names that would make the menu artisans at Big Mamma group groan and an Instagram presence that’s the visual equivalent of an ice cream headache, it’s a brand that feels uniquely attuned to the current mania for more-is-more sod-Brexit demob happiness. Whether a consenting adult would ever want to eat a bangin’ popcorn glaze fully loaded with chocolate beans, popcorn, cola bottles and hunky chunky Mars bar slabs is certainly open to debate — as is the assertion that it would make the perfect addition to a hot night in [aubergine emoji] [sploosh emoji]. But that doesn’t matter, just as the so-so / “crap” food at Circolo Popolare is basically an irrelevance. Life as we know it changes forever in a couple of months; Britain is living on borrowed Doughnut Time now.
Pleasing feathering of the week
Tickled pink.
Divisive accoutrement of the week
On the one hand: no one bats an eyelid when Henry Harris puts this stuff on brains. On the other hand: it’s capers. On eggs. Unlike that slightly overcooked yolk on the right, this one will run and run.
How to eat a peach of the week
First the berries, now the stone fruit. As summer slowly bleeds into autumn, greens and pinks give way to reds and golds; snap and acidity give way to perfume and sweetness. Just weeks away from decorative gourd season, savour what is easily the thirstiest, most DTF fruit while it’s in season.
Week of the week
DJ Khaled said it best.
Dish of the week
Is an artic roll just a sweet beef wellington?
Shot of the week
Or is a beef wellington just a savoury artic roll?