We have news. @ftweekend.com is launching a set of business lunch awards. Nominate. Nominate like the wind. And then an illustrious panel of judges will choose the winners. Plus me.

Good morning, FT Weekend is launching a best business lunch award! You can join in! NOMINATE a restaurant and WIN lunch for two at Simpsons on the Strand. Or do it out of gratitude and support for the restaurant biz.. on.ft.com/4q1CqTY

Help FT Weekend crown the best business lunch restaurant in London - @harrietfl.ft.com is calling for your nominations and votes www.ft.com/content/00f3...

Exciting times for the bon viveurs among you. We are launching a Business Lunch Awards in partnership with OpenTable - because lunch is good, lunch is fun, lunch is professional advantageous. To do this, we need nominations. and there are three (!) excellent prizes up for grabs on.ft.com/4gZEnw3

i personally have nothing but fond feelings towards national ID cards. i paid a whole £10 for an *extremely* legitimate looking one in 2006 only to have it immediately confiscated by the bartender who pointed out "it's literally on the front page today that the government has rejected this scheme".

Earlier this year, I spent considerable time working on an essay for @ftweekend.com about issues around autism: www.ft.com/content/d1ba... I read a great deal about the condition and spoke to several experts. There is no indication whatever that use of a single drug in pregnancy is linked to it.

Congratulations to @ftweekend.com readers Saoirse Ronan and Jack Lowden on the birth of their first child I have been sent this picture twice already this morning www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/ar...

not saying jeremy clarkson is a bad man but he is consistently the only person in this village who doesn't do a little hand wave of acknowledgment if you have to pull over for him while driving. which is the countryside equivalent of not saying thank you when someone holds the door.

I wrote about the loss of excitement around veganism, which I think reflects a deeper shift: progressives have lost faith that they can change the world. The sooner we get some idealism back, the better on.ft.com/3UPnqdq

I missed this piece at the time but it neatly sums up how incredibly irritating vegan food packaging is on.ft.com/4mvUtze

If you must salad make it Maison Francois, Brutto, Bocca di Lupa, Via Carota or Zuni Café. The Weekend FT complete with the definitive summer salad mini magazine is still on sale today on.ft.com/4fLqzVm

Elsewhere in today’s @ftweekend.com we have a spiffing salad supplement in which I set out to save the dreary British salad from itself. on.ft.com/4mlVcDb

we made a whole magazine about salad. it is beautiful! it is full of recipes from chefs who really love them! **you can pull it out and keep it in your kitchen!** or read it online ft.com/summerofsalad

When was the last time you witnessed - or better yet, participated in - a spontaneous mass performance of the popular folk song Why Are We Waiting?

Attention all designated holiday cooks - this one's for us on.ft.com/3ULqHtY

Went to a proper restaurant for an Old School Lunch and on the table next to me close enough that I heard every word a food and drink PR was pitching a client about the launch of their new restaurant. “We want to be in the FT”, they said. “Well the FT doesn’t really do restaurants”, she said.

Welcome to FT Edit! When the news is overwhelming, we bring you eight stories a day, chosen by editors, offering clarity, fresh perspectives, insight and inspiration — plus some extra treats! Explore more at www.ft.com/ftedit or, if you're reading on iOS, find us on the FT app: on.ft.com/44SHfGA

without singling out any critics, or any chart-topping podcasting duos, did anyone who recommended this show actually watch it??? or just read summary (bookshop! murders! mark gatiss!) and review accordingly? i am your prime sucker for this sort of stuff but it is so dull and unendearing

The spotify playlist attached to this will brighten even a v cloudy morning. Nun jazz! www.ft.com/content/a299...

good morning. today i will be mostly be found hiding from my neighbours. on.ft.com/46sQL4r

Our own @harrietfl.ft.com brings the Hot Cotswolds Summer to FT Weekend. An absolute delight including this line: "I asked a neighbour if she wanted to get a drink, and she suggested we drive 20 minutes to “farmhouse” rather than walk to the pub" which made me shiver with joy.. on.ft.com/4f7HAsh

I have seen it three times so I believe it to be intentional and not an embarrassing mistake: this summer's hottest look for Gen Z girls is to walk around with your trouser fly open.

The lunch appreciators are multiplying www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

"Balthazar is like McDonald’s for New Yorkers with too much money or not enough imagination, but I like McDonald’s and I like Balthazar, too." www.ft.com/content/dc22...

have you ever thought very very hard about ice cubes and how they could be better? this @timhayward.bsky.social piece is fascinating and - as one commenter says - finally, a use for the insulated mug freebies they give you at corporate events. Read on... on.ft.com/3UkWjGH

After my son was diagnosed with autism, I've been thinking about my own relationship to this strange, highly contentious condition. During a sabbatical this spring, I spoke to some experts about it. My essay based on all that has just gone online on FT.Com: on.ft.com/4kKdCfe

The BBC controversy no one is talking about (?!)

Having done due diligence that this is in full accordance with he FT paywall, I can recommend bookmarking!

You can write for The Fence. If you have a good insider story or perspective, all you need to do is drop us a line at [email protected]. You don’t need to be a professional writer: we have at least one debutant every edition, and we're open to just about anything.

Thank God. I was beginning to get worried. www.ft.com/content/1ae5...

I’m hiring a reporter for London Centric, looking for someone smart who can use a phone, knock on doors and wants to cause trouble. Don’t care if you’ve got qualifications, just want evidence of caring about news. Initial six month contract, pay above national rates. www.londoncentric.media/p/jobs

In this month's glorious feature, @timhayward.bsky.social reinvents the British fishcake. No biggie. on.ft.com/3TzYeqt

For today’s @ftweekend.com I am at Berut Bistro which, as the name suggests is a delightful small Lebanese restaurant in London’s Marylebone serving many great dishes including the Beirut Cloud, my dessert of the year so far, and quite possibly beyond. on.ft.com/44aeHqd

After months of reporting (and even my own attempt at a jiu jitsu class), my FT Magazine cover story on Mark Zuckerberg’s metamorphosis to red-blooded “Maga Mark” is out! Is this political expediency, a midlife crisis or who Zuck has been all along? on.ft.com/4nsoktx

(but also, yeah I guess you could google it!) Brilliant recipe this week by Maria Bradford. Honestly, this marinade will change your summer. on.ft.com/4lcV3Rh

A nervous flyer, I just checked in for my flight tomorrow also known as friday 13th and am sat in seat 11A. Why do I not feel more reassured.

phone is getting uncomfortably hot if i use it for more than five min in one go which on the one hand - dangerous? - on the other, finally an anti-procrastination app that works!

(nowhere is this dynamic better observed than at the Toklas summer party - a very lovely restaurant from the Frieze founders. you can spot the art world half of the crowd very easily thanks to giraffe-like necks, lengthened by years of looking over your shoulder)

as a recovering art world journalist, it has taken me two years in food and drink to learn that work events can actually be... fun! friendly! occasionally even... heart-warming! This great piece has reminded me what i'm not missing www.ft.com/content/1377...

Me for @ftweekend.com on the joys of cities less-travelled See ya in Denver, Belfast, Helsinki... on.ft.com/45HOMbR

A great column sparked by @marinaoloughlin.bsky.social’s unusual - but actually very wise, you see - decision to go to Denver on holiday on.ft.com/4kTSkw3

If you live in the uk I feel like you have almost definitely seen the Stockport Pyramid and wondered about it - in which case this week’s @jayrayner1.bsky.social review is for you on.ft.com/4dTjDEn

God knows there is no such thing as an original idea in magazines but please, a little decorum! a little twist! a break of more than the six weeks it presumably took to put this story together!

the few times i've tried snus it gave me the same oh-my-god-i-feel-amazing-oh-no-i'm-going-to-be-sick head rush as when I smoked my first cig as a teen. not good, but very nostalgic.

On Monday I got chatting to a man on a 3-hours-on-tarmac Milan to Birmingham flight…and this evening i find myself stood next to this same man on an overground train deep in south London? Gods of narrative, please, i have a boyfriend! deploy your incredible meet cute powers elsewhere!

When I posted this on IG it cropped the ‘highly commended’ part out with AI (honestly!!!) so I would like to state for record that Take A Break in fact won best magazine section of the year at BSME awards… but I got this, which is very nice, and also a newly created award for best wizarding robes

I have heard @timhayward.bsky.social talking at great length over several months about his efforts to make his own pie machine… and now you can read about it! Glorious stuff on.ft.com/4kooU9F The hand pie is an overlooked British icon. That ends now

Two fonts bad. four fonts good.

Some appropriate Sunday reading from the pasta issue by Niki Blasina, who is also to thank for commissioning lots of this issue while I was lying on a sun lounger in the garden* for much of last month on.ft.com/3SPDQRM * technically, recovering from surgery…by lying on a sun lounger