Wednesday, 26th January. Our last day. So, after a good walk in the hills above Le Rouret, we head for Cannes to shop and lunch at Plage Royale, our favourite beach restaurant on the Croisette. We park in the subterranean carpark beneath the Palais des Festivals, a multi-storey cavern so immense it is easy to lose your [...]
Archive for January, 2011
A Week in Provence:(4) Wednesday-Thursday
Posted in Hotels & Restaurants, Travel, Uncategorized, tagged Cannes, Chateau Minuty, Croisette Cannes, EasyJet, Jamie Raftery, Le Rouret, Michelin Red Guide, My Archipelago, Nice-Cote d'Azur Terminal 2, Palais des Festivals Cannes, Plage Royale Cannes, Rue d' Antibes Cannes, Schubert Ensemble, The Castle at Taunton on January 27, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
A Week in Provence:(2) Saturday-Sunday
Posted in Hotels & Restaurants, Travel, Uncategorized, tagged Aups, Grand Cafe de Cours Aups, Le Concorde Vidauban, Lorgues, My Archipelago, Provence, St Martin Lorgues, St Pancrace Aups, The Castle at Taunton, Var, Vidauban on January 24, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
Saturday, 22nd. Clear skies, brilliant sunshine, wine-chilled air. Winter in Provence at its most perfect. We drive to Aups, high in the hills of the Var, the truffle capital of the region. It is market day and the village square is heaving with folk inspecting the stalls scattered around the plane trees. There is everything here: cow, [...]
A Week in Provence:(1) Thursday-Friday
Posted in Hotels & Restaurants, Travel, Uncategorized, tagged Albert Roux, Cistercian abbey at Thoronet, Cote d'Azur, Draguignan, EasyJet, Hertz, Holiday rentals Le Mas de Gavarron, Le Thoronet Abbey, Les Chenes Verts Tourtour, Michel Roux, Michel Roux Jr, Music at The Castle, My Archipelago, Nice Cote d'Azur, Paul Bajade at Les Chenes Verts, Provence, Schubert Ensemble, South of France, Speedy Boarding with EasyJet, The Castle at Taunton, The Roux Brothers on January 22, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
Louise and I have decamped to the South of France for a week’s respite from the damp and pewter skies of England in January. We leave The Castle in the safe hands of Kevin McCarthy, our GM, who will be preparing for the Schubert Ensemble at the end of the month – the first in [...]
Wassailing The Castle’s Apple Orchard in glorious mud!
Posted in Hotels & Restaurants, Uncategorized, tagged Charlton Orchards, The Castle at Taunton, Wassail on January 18, 2011 | 1 Comment »
They came over the Levels through mediaeval mists and thin, intermittent rain. Scores 0f our most loyal, most resolute clients – all bound for Charlton Orchards near Creech St Michael. And what for? To wassail our new apple saplings in deep, thick, sticky mud – an orchard of 60 trees to mark 60 years of the Chapman dynasty at Taunton’s Castle Hotel. [...]
Michel Roux. This is how bad “service” gets in Somerset!
Posted in Hotels & Restaurants, Uncategorized, tagged Dunster, Dunster Yarn Market, Exmoor, Michel Roux Jr, Michel Roux's Service on BBC 2, Somerset, The Castle at Taunton on January 17, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
I despair. Michel Roux’s Service on BBC 2 needs to come to my home county, Somerset. A special friend from London spent the weekend with us. On Sunday, we took her to Exmoor – England’s smallest and most exquisite National Park. At lunchtime we found ourselves in the beautiful mediaeval village of Dunster. We were hungry and [...]
Michel Roux’s Service on BBC 2: A coup for the restaurant industry
Posted in Hotels & Restaurants, Uncategorized, tagged BBC 2 Michel Roux's Service, Fay Maschler, Great British Chefs by Kit Chapman, Michel Roux Jr, Michel Roux's Service, My Archipelago, Quentin Crewe, The Castle at Taunton on January 14, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
The arrival Michel Roux’s Service, an eight-part prime time TV series which introduces a group of young front-of-house career hopefuls to the restaurant world, is the greatest PR breakthrough our industry has seen in over 30 years. Since the late 1970s and early 80s, when chefs emerged from their lowly status as kitchen skivvies to be lionized as superstars, front-of-house has become the Cinderella [...]
An embarrassment of apples. “Drink up and we’ll wassail thee”!
Posted in Hotels & Restaurants, Uncategorized, tagged Apple orchard, Charlton Orchards, My Archipelago, Somerset, Taunton, The Castle at Taunton, Wassail, Wassail in Somerset on January 12, 2011 | 1 Comment »
Last week I wrote a letter to all members of The Castle Dining Club – 338 supporters of our special events and, indeed, our most loyal clients. My purpose was to invite them to “wassail” or celebrate the planting of our own orchard of 60 apple trees to mark the 60th year of the Chapman Family’s custodianship of the [...]
Kitchen amateurs and rogue chefs still roam wild.
Posted in Hotels & Restaurants, Uncategorized, tagged Blackdown Hills, Brakes, East Devon, Honiton, Jamie Raftery, M&S, My Archipelago, Olive Magazine, Sainsbury's, The Castle at Taunton, The West Country on January 8, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
This week Louise and I suffered one of the worst meals we’ve eaten in years. On Friday an errand in Honiton, a small town in East Devon, left us free for some lunch. I called up a favourite pub in a nearby all-thatch and picture postcard village tucked inside the folds of the Blackdown Hills. Until 2008, the pub was run by a brilliant [...]
A taste of what’s cooking at The Castle in 2011
Posted in Hotels & Restaurants, My writing, Uncategorized, tagged Arabella Weir, Charlton Orchards, Christopher Plummer, Jamie Raftery, Jerry Hall, Mercer Books, My Archipelago, Nicholas Parsons, Somerset, Taunton, The Castle at Taunton, The English Apple on January 2, 2011 | 2 Comments »
Happy New Year to you all! My kind blog-meisters at WordPress.com suggested I posted “2010 in review” below and I was happy to oblige. To be absolutely accurate, I finished the year on 10,139 views for a blog I began in March. A creditable result. Blog aside, 2010 was a landmark year for three reasons: the publication of [...]
