20 years of Observer Food Monthly: 20 key moments in food

From MasterChef to Noma, and street food to the rise of female chefs

20 years of Observer Food Monthly: recipes from the stars of the future

So what of the next two decades? We introduce four up-and-coming chefs and their brilliant recipes

Nadiya Hussain: ‘I never even dreamed of being a part of all this’

For Observer Food Monthly’s 20th anniversary, the TV presenter and cook recalls baking cakes for her GCSEs 20 years ago – and the worst thing about cooking at home in a pandemic

Nigella Lawson: ‘I can be ecstatically happy with just bread and cheese’

In an exchange of emails, the broadcaster and writer explains how Twitter helped her through lockdown and what she eats on a night off

Cookbooks are great, pastry is easy…

What I learned in my year as a restaurant critic stuck at home, by Jay Rayner

The joy of eating out again. The pain of trying to get a table

‘Would you like to go on the waiting list?’ may now be the most terrible words in the English language

‘I’m hungry for something decadent!’: readers on 11 restaurants they have missed most

In England, dining out is back on the menu. The rest of the UK should soon follow suit. But where to go first? Guardian readers on the brilliant local eateries they’re yearning to get back to – and the dish they will eat first

At last, printed menus and a chance to wear smoky eyeshadow again

‘Restaurants are back, back, back, so I booked breakfast to see off the misery of the past year’

What got me through lockdown? Sharing pork belly with the next-door neighbours

Swapping missing ingredients and spare custard tarts over the garden wall made difficult times a little easier to live with

The old scrapbook recipe collections that tell the story of our lives

Our personal recipe collections catalogue the food we have loved – and the dishes we dreamed of making

A restaurant refresher course: how do I behave in one?

‘It’s a wonderful, heavenly, magical place but, please, no standing on the seats for your TikTok shoot’

Tell us about the restaurant you miss – and the food you can’t wait to order

As hospitality venues prepare to reopen, we’d love to know the place you’re most keen to visit, and the dish you’ve been craving during lockdown

Cook dinner with Robert Carrier and you’ll need butter, cream, wine and quite a lot of cognac

Great Dishes of the World was a fabulous book full of all the richest flavours. By Jay Rayner

A lesson from Covid: my needs are pathetically minuscule

‘As we edge towards freedom, I often think of the cupboards still crammed with flour, rice, yeast, suet and scone mix that we bought to stave off a pandemic’

Trails of the unexpected: seafood in Scotland and fish and chips in Yorkshire

We’ll soon be able to venture beyond our local park … so in the first of The Observer’s guide to Britain’s best secret places we’re off in search of fine food