Of Gin Palaces and Pop(ups)

I'm not a short man. Well actually, at 5' 8" in old money, I suppose I am. What I mean is I don't do shorts. I have two very bad memories of Bacardi and Pernod that mean I can never let them pass my lips again. But, the exception is a summer's afternoon and a …

Pigging out with Smithy

Martin Dawes on a the sprog of a Sheffield institution among food lovers. Apparently alive and well

Another helping from Martin Dawes

Pork belly at Thyme Cafe

I RECALL a few years ago that chef Richard Smith got a bit of a kicking from some London critic who had been to review his then flagship (now deceased) restaurant, Thyme, in Crosspool. There were the usual clichés – yawn – about being Northern, the Full Monty, Sheffield steel and, the killer punch, Sheffield Portions.

 The point being that the food being served up was not London portions, dainty little bits of food which left you hungry, but plates which left you feeling stuffed. Well, you don’t have to eat it all, advice my wife and I should have taken after a bit of a blowout at Thyme once when we had eaten so much we had to find a friendly wall to hold us up when we left and before we found the car.

 Smithy was a bit perplexed by the…

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