Vittles

Today’s episode of the Vittles podcast is an interview with baker and pastry chef Anna Higham, the owner of the lauded Quince Bakery and Clementine, a café opening soon in Islington.
Higham’s story is as rich and varied as her bakes. Her career spans some of the world’s most famous kitchens, beginning with the Gordon Ramsay Group in London. After moving to New York, she spent time at the legendary Gramercy Tavern. While in the city, the mentorship of Claudia Fleming would prove formative for Higham, and when she returned to London in the late 2010s she brought with her a focus on provenance and seasonality.
Higham’s name quickly became known to pastry aficionados in the capital via her work at the landmark new-wave Modern British restaurant Lyle’s. While the pastry section broadly subscribed to the sometimes sparse aesthetic and precision preferred by Lyle’s head chef James Lowe – she shared his obsession with hyper-seasonality, British fruit and heritage grains – her desserts were subtly different. Higham would ensure her creations were generous and delicious, with less voguish fixation on oats, fruit and yoghurt than her colleagues had, whose desserts could sometimes pass for breakfast bowls. Instead, there were cakes, cream, meringues, caramels – as well as an abundance of berries.
During our conversation, Higham discusses what drove that approach, who shaped it, and how she gained the confidence to finally go it alone. Following the immense success of Quince and ahead of the opening of Clementine next month, she also shares her view on the ‘hype’ bakery scene in London – and her venue’s own place within it.
We hope you enjoy the episode. Let us know what you think in the comments!


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Today’s very special episode of the Vittles podcast is with journalist and editor Stephen Buranyi, who spent six months reporting and investigating the world of restaurant influencers for our Issue 3 cover story, titled ‘Who’s Paying for All of This?
When he set out reporting at the beginning of this year, Stephen, an experienced reporter, soon realised the London restaurant influencer industry was much more tight-lipped than he’d anticipated, more discreet ‘than the civil service’. ‘I found in general here people did not wanna talk,’ he tells us in today’s conversation. ‘I think there’s a sense that they don’t want anyone to know how this whole thing actually works.’
Eventually, he found people who would talk. In this podcast, we learn more about how those conversations came about, why ‘a lot of restaurateurs and PRs find influencers a little bit distasteful and a bit vulgar,’ but also why they rely on them nonetheless, even when they claim they don’t. He gets into the humans behind the characters that pop up in our feeds every day, drooling, screaming, and waxing lyrical; a largely male band of content creators who have, in many ways, become the dominant force in food media today.
We also examine the influencer industry as an extension of the advertising industry, and the problems both influencers and PRs encounter when influencers lose their audience’s trust. Stephen gets at the structural, algorithmic forces underpinning influencers’ past success, their anxiety about the future, where influencing might be going next, and - most importantly - how everyone is getting paid. We also delve into the reporting process itself: the shocks and surprises, what didn’t make it into the final piece and without too many spoilers, try to figure out how all this happened.
We hope you enjoy it.


This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.vittlesmagazine.com/subscribe

Today’s episode of the Vittles podcast is with one of the UK’s most talented and idiosyncratic chefs. If you haven’t heard of Will Gleave, then your favourite chef will have. Through his early cooking at the wine bar P. Franco, and then at the restaurants Bright and Peg, Will has exercised an immense influence over the modern London restaurant industry – its focus on natural wine, borderless cuisine, high-level cooking in relaxed environments, and a type of effortlessness that many aspire to.
In a rare public appearance, Will spends an hour talking to Adam about his early years cooking in London restaurants, setting the small plate-natural wine bar template in the city at P. Franco, looking outside of Europe for inspiration, what he likes to eat himself and why, ultimately, he decided to leave the capital and set up home on the Kent coast with his young family, and cook at Sargasso in Margate.
Will traces his journey from the kitchens of Harvey Nichols, The Square, and Arbutus in London to Tasmania, where he found himself at Garagistes, one of Australia’s most celebrated restaurants. When returned to the UK, he co-founded P. Franco, which was named Eater London’s restaurant of the year in 2017. Bright and Peg followed, before all three abruptly closed in 2022 and 2023 to the shock of the London restaurant industry. This was followed by a year-long residency at Hill & Szrok on Broadway Market - which was our own restaurant of the year in 2024 - where he revived the British steak and chop house with his signature elan.
During the episode, we discuss what it was really like taking over two induction hobs inside a wine shop with no extraction (or licence to trade as a restaurant), the relentless misery of working in London’s most renowned Michelin-starred kitchens, the influence of Australia and Japan on his cooking, the greatness of 40 Maltby Street and its chef Steve Williams, the story behind the closure of Bright and Peg, tradition and innovation, cooking steak, who the best pasta chef in the city is right now, and whether we have really yet to have THE ‘Will Gleave restaurant’.
We hope you enjoy it.
A massive thanks as usual to Lucy Dearlove, our producer and to the whole team at Young Space for hosting our recording sessions.


This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.vittlesmagazine.com/subscribe

Today’s episode of the Vittles podcast is a joint interview with Farsin Rabiee and Ziad Halub, the duo behind Logma, the Iranian-Iraqi bistro cafe, which opened close to London Fields at the end of last year. Earlier in the spring, Rabiee and Halub began opening one evening a week, on Wednesdays, for a communal, supper club style dinner service, which is Logma’s genesis. However, its sandwiches — or in the words of Hester van Hensbergen, who reviewed the café last month, ‘gargantuan pitas filled with lamb kofte or aubergine’ — have since taken the ‘Goldsmiths Row Riviera’ by storm and immediately went viral on social media.
In the episode, we discuss creating something that people really want in a moment when so many hospitality businesses are feeling the pain; about the meaning and importance of community and authenticity; about navigating virality and hype online; and about how, despite all their early success, neither are trained chefs.
We hope you enjoy the episode.
Like our recent podcasts, this episode is free to listen to for all subscribers. You can listen to it here in Substack, on Apple Podcasts or through Spotify. If you’re so inclined, please like, share, rate and comment wherever you get your podcasts.
A massive thanks as usual to Lucy Dearlove, our producer and to the whole team at Young Space for hosting our recording sessions.
In an exciting development you can now also watch this podcast on YouTube. For that, huge thanks to our videographer Zaineb Abelque and editor Callum Winter.


This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.vittlesmagazine.com/subscribe

Today’s episode is an interview with Shuko Oda, the co-creator and executive head chef at Koya, the Japanese udon noodle restaurant with sites in Soho, the City and Hackney.
When Koya arrived at 49 Frith Street in Soho, a whole 16 years ago, it replaced Alistair Little, the mighty influential temple of modern British cuisine. Since then, Koya itself has become a huge part of the modern London restaurant, revolutionising how Londoners think of Japanese food. It was the brainchild of former City trader John Devitt who, inspired by Paris’ Kunitoraya, installed Shuko alongside head chef Junya Yamazaki, who had both worked at Rose Bakery in Dover Street Market, to create a restaurant based around udon noodles. Soon, chefs and diners from all over London were flocking to Koya for its blackboard, where Shuko and Junya reinterpreted Japanese cuisine with British ingredients.
Since then, Shuko has gone onto open more Koyas, including Koya Ko in Hackney. It remains a restaurant that is principally Japanese – built on the success of its house-made udon noodles and dashi – but, as we talk about in the podcast, its storied blackboard menu of specials of small plates, salads and its relationships with some of Britain’s best suppliers, has made Koya a restaurant that exemplifies a type of modern London dining, and has allowed it to stand the test of time.
We hope you enjoy the episode.
Like our recent podcasts, this episode is free to listen to for all subscribers. You can listen to it here in Substack, on Apple Podcasts or through Spotify. If you’re so inclined, please like, share, rate and comment wherever you get your podcasts.
A massive thanks as usual to Lucy Dearlove, our producer and to the whole team at Young Space for hosting our recording sessions.
In an exciting development you can now also watch this podcast on YouTube. For that, huge thanks to our videographer Zaineb Abelque and editor Callum Winter.


This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.vittlesmagazine.com/subscribe