Food news antipasto

Celebrity Chef Gordon Ramsay opened the doors earlier this week on his “most ambitious project yet” in the tallest building in the City of London. The chef has launched two restaurants, a bar and a cookery school at 22 Bishopsgate on February 3. Netflix is producing a documentary series about the project that follows Ramsay in the run up to the opening. I’m sure there will be swearing involved.

Grapes are ubiquitous in supermarkets and you can find them almost any time of year. They are usually sold in large bags and if you don’t have a crowd around to eat them, it can be difficult to use them before they go bad. The good news is that they can easily be turned into frozen treats like sour frozen grapes and grape sorbet. Add a little wine and you can have boozy Prosecco grapes.

KitchenAid released its Color of the Year for 2025: a cheery Butter Yellow. It looks like this will be a popular choice because at the KitchenAid website it is currently out of stock, but you may be able to find it a retailer if you want to grab one.

Have you ever heard of filindeu? It is an extremely rare pasta made only in Sardinia that translates as “threads of God” in the local dialect. For centuries, the knowledge of how to make this delicate, micro-thin pasta has been passed down from mother to daughter. So few people know how to make it that there has been a push to train outsiders in the ancient art. The thin strands of pasta are crisscrossed before drying, and then shards of the pasta are served in a broth two times a year for the Feast of San Francesco.

Prue Leith is taking things a bit easier this year, as she decided to step away from the celebrity portion of the Great British Bake off. Her replacement for the Stand up to Cancer series is her long-time friend, Caroline Waldegrove OBE. While she will remain as judge of the regular series, she said that “These things are filmed back-to-back all the way through summer from April to August so you don’t get any time off. I’m getting quite old and there’s places I want to see. So I’m not doing this year’s.”

Eater’s Jaya Saxena takes a look at the latest restaurant trend she is calling LOLfood. It’s giving comfort food with a sly wink – think hot dogs served alongside upscale pasta, jalapeno popper arancini, and “shotzarellas”, which are mozzarella stick shot glasses filled with marinara sauce. The trend, says Saxena, is part of a cultural pendulum that swings between all things comfort to everything artisanal. This pendulum goes back and forth along with societal and economic shifts, with comfort food coming to the forefront in times of uncertainty. Now if you will excuse me, I’m going to go bake some toasted ravioli.