Favourite restaurants from Brussels Airlines’ short-haul network
La Petite Maison UK
54 Brook’s Mews, Mayfair,
London, tel. +44 (0)20 7495
4774, www.lpmlondon.co.uk
Every now and again a restaurant comes along that blows all the others out of the water. La Petite Maison is such a place. On entering you feel as though you’ve been transported to the south of France. It’s owned by the same people as Roka, one of London’s most fashionable restaurants, so it comes with a good pedigree, and is already a hit with the local hedge fund/Sotheby’s antiques crowd. The room is light and lovely thanks to big windows and oozes class. Taking its cue from the current trend for grazing, all dishes are intended for sharing and typically a table of two might sample four or five hors d’oeuvres followed by a single main. The food is exemplary.
A salad of French beans was excellent, and a crab and lobster salad was packed with juicy shellfish. The Provençal rosé we drank made the black legged chicken stuffed with foie gras go down beautifully. This little piece of Nice in London will be around forever. Expect to pay around €170 for dinner for two RB
hisop SPAIN
9 Passatge Marimón,
Barcelona, tel. +34 93 241
3233, www.hisop.com
From the moment you take your seat at hisop, it’s clear that someone else is in charge here. It’s a spectacle, and you just have to sit back and savour every tasty minute of it. Luckily, you are in the hands of the charming young Catalan chefs Oriol Ivern and Guillem Pla, two of a new generation of culinary wizards.
And for once, they’re not disciples of the over-lauded Adrià. Having met in 1999 while working at Barcelona’s Neichel restaurant, they forged a strong creative partnership and have gone on to conceive an audacious take on contemporary Spanish cuisine. Their startling menu is something you can really get your teeth into. It begins with two sober saucers of contrasting olive oil –arbequino from Tarragona and picual from Córdoba, served with freshly baked bread. From there on in, masterful sommelier Raquel Obelleiro will guide you through a wine list to accompany exciting aperitifs like black sausage with cuttlefish and artichoke purée, or scallop on lightly sautéed vegetables with courgette flowers, until you arrive at the delectable finale of candied olives. This is quintessential Catalan food with a 21st century creative twist. Expect to pay about €110-120 for two. JT
Foodie
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Books for cooks
This year has seen a brace of vintage cookery books with huge followings in their native countries now be published internationally to fresh acclaim. Self-taught chef Stéphane Reynaud’s exuberant celebration of all things porcine Pork and Sons (Phaidon, €39,95) was originally published in France and became an immediate bestseller. Since being published in Australia eight years ago, Greg and Lucy Malouf’s award-winning Arabesque (Quadrille, €29) has come to be regarded as the definitive guide to middle-eastern food. Meanwhile Spain’s best-selling cookery book, Simone Ortega’s 1080 Recipes (Phaidon, €39,95), is now in its 48th edition. First published in 1972, it’s become a publishing phenomenon.
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