Spear's Year in Review: Food

My stomach has had an eventful 2012. More importantly though, London has had a pretty big year gastronomically too, with a raft of Michelin Stars and a ridiculous number of new openings considering we are meant to be in a recession.

There have been launch parties, previews and tasters every week, which has been great news for the foodies of London, but very bad news for my figure.

From a host of new D&D restaurants, re-launches of established joints, a huge number of foreign imports, to a veritable smorgasbord of pop-ups and — most importantly — the launch of Spear’s Food Friday it has been a big, tasty year.

Claude Bosi found himself at the centre of a twitter spat earlier this year

William Sitwell kept us going through the early part of the year, before we launched Food Friday, with his interviews of the big names behind the restaurants and food halls, from Francois O’Neill to Ewan Venters (the Selfridges era, rather than the new Fortnum’s one we’re in now).

As we hurried into May, the list of the World’s 50 Best Restaurants was published, which saw Noma retaining the top spot. Rather to my disappointment Dinner By Heston Blumenthal shot in at number 9. I’m obviously thrilled that London made it into the top 10, I just don’t think that Heston’s Mandarin adventure was the restaurant that deserved to be there.

As summer drizzled in we launched Food Friday, a new feature with weekly updates on everything food: new launches, interviews and reviews, recipes and guest edits from the county’s top chefs. We’ve covered everything we could get our hands on and our mouths around (within reason) be it an ice-cream festival in Kings Cross or the day I nearly didn’t eat supper courtesy of Jason Atherton at Pollen Street Social.

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We brought you the very first review of Chrysan from the Hakkasan Group, Timothy Mawn’s musings on the joy of the damson and an exclusive interview with Ken Hom in September. As the year progressed, Food Friday gathered pace and we started to get even more stuck-in with hands-on cooking at Aveqia, Ladurée master-classes and pastry cheffing at Scotts.

With the restaurant reviews, cookery books and tasters flying in we decided to bring in some of the country’s biggest food players. Marcus Wareing (pictured left) was our first-ever guest editor, giving us his diary, guest recipe and surprise top 5 restaurants. Michael Caines followed suit in early December with his favourite cookery books, news of his travels and a lovely duck number.

Bosi-gate caused a little bit of a ruckus within the food world in November and luckily Spear’s had not only William Sitwell’s interview with Claude Bosi, but also an exclusive from James Isherwood, the recipient of Bosi’s grumblings. It even got us in the broadsheets.

With Vivek Singh, Marcus Wareing, Mark Hix, Tom Aikens, Michael Caines, Trine Hahnemann and Nuno Mendes all lending their combined culinary expertise to the feature, it has been wonderful news for food at Spear’s. Look out for more top names including William Curley and Alvin Leung in the New Year.

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