There is holiday hell and then there is self-catering

No salt and pepper, no spices, not enough loo roll – welcome to your holiday cottage

Fred Sirieix: ‘I was training to be a chef, but I thought it would kill my soul’

Britain’s best-known maître d’ on what his parents taught him about service, the value of hospitality and his pride in his Olympian daughter

‘This, surely, is the point of lovely lunches: they make you want to abandon reality and set up home’

Wine lists shouldn’t be terrifying but too often they make me feel like a second-class citizen

Heat-blistered dishes raise the temperature at Burnt Orange in Brighton. By Jay Rayner

Savour this selection of the city’s many great food discoveries, from street food to fine dining

‘I keep a picture of the king prawns on my phone and sometimes look at them during sadder life moments in life’

This old country pub has raised its game. Some will groan, but for me it’s a winner. By Jay Rayner

‘A cheese-themed floating restaurant that’s for people who possibly know they could be eating “cleaner”, but, well, life is short, so what the hell?’

This restaurant-with-rooms takes our writer to food heaven, with its Italian cooking made from the best Devonshire ingredients

On the corner of a quiet residential street, a small place serving dishes with genuine star quality. By Jay Rayner

For 50 years, the Cumbrian services on the M6 – now featured in a TV documentary – has been a lifeline for local producers and farmers

Hotel food is always blah, isn’t it? Or so I thought, until now …

After a long day walking sniffing you’ll need a tasty meal. Put your paws up at one of these places

The Farmerama Radio team is leading a surge of podcasts and independent magazines examining the politics and culture of food