I Made My Shed the Top Rated Restaurant On TripAdvisor: Once upon a time, long before I began selling my face by the acre for features on VICE dot com, I worked other jobs. There was one in particular that really had an impact on me: writing fake reviews on TripAdvisor. Restaurant owners would pay me £10 and I'd write a positive review of their place, despite never eating … [Read more...]

Why mushrooms may be the best food to fight aging: New research reveals that mushrooms are “without a doubt” the highest known single source of the antioxidants ergothioneine and glutathione, which are both associated with anti-aging properties. A team of researchers from Pennsylvania State University found that mushrooms are surprisingly full of both compounds, and that some … [Read more...]

The Thrill of Losing Money by Investing in a Manhattan Restaurant: If you live in New York City long enough and appear to be successfully employed in an industry that Bernie Sanders dislikes, you will be asked at some point to do three things: sponsor a table at a vanity fund-raiser, become a “producer” of a Broadway play, and invest in a restaurant. I had no trouble declining … [Read more...]

The Politics Of Pizza: How Italy's Flag And Food Are Deliciously Intertwined: A nation's flag embodies a defining aspect of its identity. It could be related to geography (the rising sun in Japan), nature (the maple leaf of Canada or the cedar of Lebanon), religion (the Christian cross or the Islamic crescent and star), political ideology (the hammer and sickle) or mythology … [Read more...]

NY restaurants - under threat? Des Gunewardena, the chairman of D&D Restaurants (the old Conran group), was in even more ebullient form than usual when I bumped into him recently over lunch in the newly opened second branch of Blacklock in the City of London. His mood, he explained, was primarily due to the fact that he had recently returned from New York. 'They may have … [Read more...]