Anissa's Blog

Last time I was at Petersham Nurseries, it was sunny and warm and Skye Gyngell was cooking. Last night was wet and miserable and there was a new chef at the stoves, Greg Malouf of Momo’s fame in Melbourne. Greg has moved to London, and he will be offering his wonderful modern take on Middle Eastern food at Petersham Nurseries.…

On 8 May I will be teaming up with Stevie Parle at the Dock Kitchen for a lamb nose to tail dinner. The evening will start with the acceptable face of offal: a welcome drink served with delicious chicken wings marinated in Aleppo pepper, allspice, Lebanese 7-spice mixture and cinnamon, lemon juice and olive oil and roasted in the…

I am straying from food and belly dancing in this post to give you a few pictures of a very interesting show I went to this morning at Mathaf in Doha. The show was of works by Cai Guo-Qiang, a Chinese artist who uses gun powder in his art although the first room in the show didn’t have…

When Fay told me to go to Dabbous before it became impossible to book a table, I listened to her and went with Francois Simon who was visiting London for a reportage. It was a total revelation. Ollie Dabbous’ cooking is just brilliant. Elegant without being pretentious. Fussy without being irritating and perfectly exquisite. And not expensive which is…

I have finally found a contemporary belly dancer I like. And guess what? She may be a cousin. Her name is Saida Helou and she is originally Syrian. I don’t think there are many Syrian Helous who are not from Mashta el-Helou. If her father is from there, then she is definitely a cousin albeit with better dancing genes.…