Christmas Eve is usually a lasagne in this house, but last night brought a hard pivot to Chinese food, with pork and prawn dumplings, steamed fish, and stir-fried rice cakes. Plus, um, tarte tatin — a little less on theme, but still great.

Best present yet this year: my little logo brought to life

Made the trek to Toad in Peckham last week for mince pies, but couldn't resist a little more. The soy sauce and sesame cookie was exquisite.

Eating the elusive Good London Taco

With the mince pie monster out the door, I’m taking a little break for Christmas - Braise will be back in January with a review of Eric Wan’s excellent new opening Tempo

You’re running out of time to eat them, but here’s my exhaustively updated guide to London’s best mince pies, including some old favourites and some new stars

A single dish specialist has to really nail that one dish — sadly Khao So-i’s modernised take on the Thai noodle soup doesn't pull off that trick

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I got engaged! Would you be shocked to hear that food was involved?

This week's post for paid subscribers: a recipe for pork and cabbage baozi that I pried out of Vivian's mum's hands

Anyone who’s eaten Whole Beast’s cooking before will not be desperately surprised to find out that their first permanent spot is off to a good start

A good reminder that AI recipes still suck, and perhaps always will — combining elements of multiple recipes into one is a skill, and a language model that's never cooked a thing won't have it

This isn't a review of Dove, because I didn't eat at Dove the restaurant, I ate at Dove the 10-per-service burger bar

I’ve updated the list of my favourite burgers in London after testing new arrivals like Dumbo, Dove, Chuck’s, and more. Paid subs can find out what made the cut.

FYI, Billingsgate Market gets a blink-and-you'll-miss-it cameo in Bugonia, which made this week's post perfect timing braise.substack.com/p/billingsga...

No trip to Billingsgate Market is complete without a visit to the cafe, and no trip to the cafe is complete without a bacon and scallop sandwich.

I don't often get to write about food for the day job, but this week I dove deep into what OpenTable does with all its data on your dining habits

Budgie Montoya’s Alpas is the best pop-up/residency I’ve been to in some time, and there are still a few tables left — definitely go along if you can

A book like The Snack Hacker could so easily have been a lazy list of artless fakeaways, but is so much more creative than that, remixing everything from Egg McMuffins to supermarket naans, often in utterly unexpected ways. It’s the most fun cookbook I’ve owned in forever.

Lupa was London’s darling right up until it wasn’t. But after the ups and downs of the hype cycle, it’s a much better restaurant than you might have heard.

London does a weirdly good line in Georgian restaurants, but even so I think new-ish opening Saperavi Social is one of the better ones, and not just for its heaving, soupy khinkali

This week’s recipe for paid subscribers is a belter: it comes from my friend Tiernan, who pairs savoury and sweet in this sourdough featuring kalamata olives and caramelised roasted grapes. Best eaten smeared thick with goat’s cheese. braise.substack.com/p/tiernans-r...

Off work this week, so I made the world's largest apple pie

Akka Falafel — which has been known as Just Falafels for as long as I’ve known it, seemingly until pretty recently — has been my go-to falafel wrap for the best part of a decade, but I suppose I’ll (reluctantly) share it with you all too

Final bake for this weekend's recipe post. You might want to subscribe for this one 👀

I entered Camille in a slightly foul mood, and left elated. Any meal that can do that is guaranteed to be something special indeed.

I wouldn't presume to declare what's best in New York, so I'll settle for listing a few of my favourites

Lots of talk about veggie burgers this week, but I think a lot of people missed that lab-grown meat would be hit by the same EU restrictions. Bad news for a pretty fragile sector.

Lucali is, without a doubt, one of the most acclaimed pizza places in New York City. It’s also pretty average.

Finally made it to Crisp, London's hype-est of pizzerias, and I regret to inform you that it really is just about that good

Adoh! is a mixed bag, but if you go in looking for cheap cocktails and fried snacks, I think you'll have a pretty good time

Can hugely recommend Ruby Tandoh’s All Consuming, a look at the origins of modern food culture that’s as funny and readable as it is meticulously researched. A total page-turner.

I know, I know, Superiority Burger is a bit of an obvious spot to celebrate in New York — I’m hardly the first. But it really does live up to the hype, so long as you don’t bother with the actual burger.

I'm on holiday so I've been a little lax on self-promotion, but a few weeks ago I broke out of London for a long walk and a pub dinner. Here's what I thought of it.

Surprise, surprise: the new cookbook by Ixta Belfrage is excellent. I’ve loved cooking its punchy, colourful Brazilian-inspired recipes, from lime-soaked okra skewers to coconut curry roast chicken, and it has me sorely tempted to go pick up her last book too.

Charcoal Champ is a north London north Chinese hotspot, where you should order a great many grilled skewers and wash them down with a cold Tsingtao, as you idly wonder why British BBQ culture can’t be a little more like this

I've always been curious to try Carbone, but this piece on the new London outpost has done a great job of putting me off it

I had a slightly uneven meal at The Macbeth, a new Portugal-inspired venture from half of Four Legs (Two Legs?), but the potential is clear to see

The slice is slowly taking over London, from the ubiquitous New York-style to options from Rome, Detroit, and some that feel more distinct to this city. I’ve eaten almost everywhere currently serving pizza by the slice, and here are the places I really rate.

London’s slice shop obsession is in full swing, but Paulie’s is one of the few that really hews close to the New York format. Not everything here is great, but the standard slices are some of the city’s best in the New York style, and are almost cartoonishly good looking

I first found Zeit für Brot in Berlin way back in 2019, so I was just a little surprised to see one turn up on my doorstep. Go for the famous cinnamon rolls, stick around for the should-be-famous schokostange

This week for paid subscribers, my review of Sama Sama, a Malaysian-Scottish cookbook that makes more sense than that might sound

To the surprise of no one, the Dexter burger at The Plimsoll remains very good indeed

The name may suggest it’s all about plonk, but don’t worry: Planque’s kitchen is every bit as deserving of your attention, whether you have the palate for its wine list or (like me) definitely don’t

Bing Bong is a silly name for seriously good pizza, with a focus on grandma slices built to show off the exceptional dough

A Billingsgate breakfast for my birthday this weekend: scallops from the market, smoked bacon from my local butchers, and Dusty Knuckle potato sourdough. Extravagant doesn't quite cover it, but I'll take it.

This feels like an important detail to bury deep in the piece. A doubled calorie deficit might just explain the doubled weight loss, and 'processed food is more calorie dense' doesn't feel like much of a discovery

This week’s paid post is a recipe that started life as something completely different — cooked sea bass for a stuffed pasta filling — but found new life through the power of leftovers. It turns out we prefer it like this anyway.

The best meals get better as they go, but you're not always so lucky. Joyeta Ng's new menu at Mu starts tremendously, but the snacks and starters are better than anything that comes after.

Wrote about food for the day job and now I'm out here getting ratioed by the US Consumer Product Safety Commission