Effervesce Sense | Sparkling expectations

"It’s a stupendous, momentous bottle but it’s also extremely fun to drink"

Effervesce Sense | Sparkling victory or sparkling defeat

"Before I was a member I did accidentally filch one of its bespoke flutes which match the Taittinger BAFTA-labelled bottles"

In full Bloomsday

"Approaching Dublin with Ulysses in mind, if not in hand, is like wearing a set of bifocals that fractures the city into complementary parallels: so much has changed a century later, and so much seems unchanged"

Review: Grand Hotel Central, Barcelona

"I spent all night sweating in a club called El Coño de Tu Prima and passed out at 5am in a dorm echoing with drunken screams from Las Ramblas"

Effervesce Sense | First tastes in the wild

"Strains of a harp float through the gloaming, revealing fire pits and white marquees in a woodland clearing. This is what a Bollinger Bacchanalia looks like"

Jesus moment | Park Hyatt Hyderabad

"City hotels that become miniature cities themselves are my Umberto Eco chambers of delight"

Blood and guts

“Don’t deceive yourself, passion never gets forgiveness." Mark C. O'Flaherty follows the Pasolini path in Italy, from birth to murder

100 years of La Mamounia

"The whole place thrums in a kind of postcoital way"

Too loud down under | Ace Hotel Sydney

"I saw one guest fall down them and another trip up them in a few minutes: not the best first impression"

Vintage Melbourne

Neil D.A. Stewart explores some of his favourite city's hidden Victorian secrets

A Danish double | Koan and Kadeau, Copenhagen

"Korean food is having a moment. South, I mean. The North is, well, doing whatever it is the North does"

Seen anything good?

"For some, going to festivals is all about parties, meetings, lunches, drinking, not getting that taxi you wanted speaking the local language wrong and losing your apartment keys"

Effervesce Sense | Fear not the armpit

"Mention Greek wine to most people and instantly, “It’s not retsina, is it?” is flung back in your face. This Brut Cuvée is such a far cry from the gut-wrencher I brought back from Athens in the 90s"

Buzz reads

Neil D.A. Stewart on the best books of 2023, and the one that really should have won

A fairytale castle with chef charming | Schloss Schauenstein, Fürstenau

He’s just too sexy to be cooking. Too fanciable and beddable to be hidden in some dank corner kitchen. He has the swept-back, salt-spectacled hair of a Greek god and the neat, trimmed stubble of a high-class gigolo

The future’s so bright

Karim Rashid’s first hotel project, Semiramis, opened in Athens in 2004. It looks older – yet is all the bolder for it

Cooking the mountain | Atelier Moessmer Norbert Niederkofler, Brunico

“I grew up without a supermarket on the corner. Despite this, there was always plenty of food on the table, even in winter. So I had to set up my own supermarket to see me through the lean months"

Poor choice | Stark, Broadstairs

"It’s all rather depressing, the despondent cries scratched into the bowl like some end-of-meal plea for help. Is the chef okay? Should I call the Samaritans or his sponsor? What’s happening? I don’t understand"

Effervesce Sense | It’s complicated

"Some of us start and continue tasting exclusive vintage bottles while others cajole their friends to help multi-buy at Lidl. There is delicious quality to be found in each instance"

Head of the table | The Chairman, Hong Kong

"Chinese food in Britain was the first popular takeout. Although, these were mostly Cantonese dishes adapted to British tastes, a sort of Chinese-ish and cross-cultural melange"

Breakfast epiphanies | Brunch at The Four Seasons, Bengaluru

"For me it’s all about eating as much Indian food as possible"

The proof in the puddings | CODA Dessert Dining, Berlin

"CODA, however, isn’t a rejection of the pseudo snobbery of fine dining, but a diversion from the traditional, tiresome, rolled-out understanding of a savoury-sweet tasting menu."

Abou El Sid, Cairo

"The Grand Marquis wine, though, was a disaster. A blend of Sultanine Blanche and Chardonnay, it might have just as well been camel piss and sand"

Pasolini’s last supper

"I sat at Pasolini’s regular table, and it could have been 1975."

A zed, two noughts, and more | Zooba, Cairo

"I discovered that koshari might have been invented by French settlers in the 19th century as a veggie dish called couches de riz. Other outlets even have the gall to blame the British"

David J Constable on Venissa, Venice

"Venice is also a flirty temptress to the solo idler, the wandering daydreamer and the inquisitive traveller"

Whatever kills you

Dreamweaver: Sandy Powell’s screen presence

On rhino safari in Uganda

Shooting Leigh Bowery

Milan isn’t burning