Bill Oldfield

Finding a gem of a restaurant while at the Edinburgh Fringe #thisisedfringe #edfringe

The Edinburgh Fringe Festival

I spent a week at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe just recently. I’ve been a few times now, and if you’ve never been, you’re missing a wonderful yet daunting experience.

Nowhere in the world is there collected so much talent in one small space. In less than a month there are more than 3,000 shows with more than 50,000 performances in more than 300 venues. Anybody can…

Summer in the City

Bill Oldfield's thought's on the sensitivity of waiting staff: Are you being served?

A nice, sensitive waiter!

We all know there are things that irritate us about waiting staff. It’s a particularly subjective and personal matter but, in a recent unscientific survey carried out by yours truly, there appears to be some common complaints.

Over all, it doesn’t seem to matter how competent the waiter is, whether he can carry six plates at once, pour wine with one hand while the…

Pigeon breast, pigs trotters and ox tongues are not found in many people’s kitchens. And if you were to ask your butcher for the ingredients, he’d probably raise an eyebrow. Not necessarily because he doesn’t have them, rather that he rarely gets asked for them.

Don’t be squeamish about the trotter. It’s there to add flavour and make the terrine hold together. Lovely.

Serves six to ten

Two to…

One of the most evocative of smells is that of the sea and I don’t think anyone’s managed to bottle it yet. But samphire’s a herb or vegetable with an aroma that when fresh, instantly teleports you to the seaside.

Sometimes referred to as sea asparagus but more accurately called glasswort, samphire is found on coastlines and is mainly harvested, in the UK, from the mud flats of East Anglia…

Read Bill Oldfield's latest blog: Saving your reputation.

I’ve written before about the necessity of good promotion and marketing to make a restaurant successful. When most people think of marketing they think of advertising but that’s only an element of a wider marketing plan and, for many independent small businesses such as a single restaurant, advertising can be beyond their budget; at least to make a significant effect on their business.

It’s…

The well-known restaurant on Claypath in Durham

Driving back from London late one Sunday evening a few weeks ago, I found the A1 closed for maintenance somewhere in the depths of Northamptonshire or Nottinghamshire or some other such sounding place. Annoying. You somehow think that because you’ve chosen a quiet time to travel, you can control the long journey and arrive home at approximately the…

Pea and wild garlic flower salad with goats cheese

You may have noticed that we’ve had some sunshine recently and that temperatures have crawled  above freezing. This means spring is in the air and wild garlic is starting to show. And wild garlic is food for free. Excellent cooked like spinach but also great, raw, in salads.

Also known as ramsons, wild garlic grows in woodland, along river banks and where the bluebells grow. Different from the…