The most popular posts on my Substack

From Brazil to New York, solo travel and why cookbooks so often don’t work

Substack Notes has triggered such a flood of new subscribers (thankyou, thankyou) that I realise some of you may have just joined up in a friendly, supportive way without knowing what I write about. Or even who the heck I am …

(You can find the answer in my About page but if you can’t be bothered to click through - and I can’t blame you - I’m an award-winning UK-based food and wine writer and author of 25 books. I write regularly - mainly about booze - for the Guardian, Decanter and National Geographic Traveller Food and I publish my own website matchingfoodandwine.com.

You may think this creates a lavish income which means I don’t need paid subscribers but let me assure you - as with most journalists - this is not the case. Besides my website has a behind-the-scenes team to pay for so if you are in a position to upgrade to a paid subscription keep it free for everyone to use I’d be deeply, deeply grateful. 

You can subscribe for as little as £4.50 ($5.59) a month (though signing up for a year at £42 which works out at £3.50 a month or under £1 a week is much better value!)

Basically what you get as a free subscriber are general features and opinion pieces - what, back in the day, we’d have called blogs. What paid subscribers get is the specifics. The wine and restaurant recs, the  tips, the how-to’s and the hacks.

For example after my trip to New York back in February free subscribers got some general advice about how to eat in New York without breaking the bank while paid subscribers got to find out exactly where I’d been and where I’d recommend (including, of course, my son’s restaurant Hawksmoor 😉). 

Other popular posts have been:

Why cookbooks so often let you down. (Don’’t get me started again on this one!)

So you think you don’t like natural wine (part of a series on learning to love the things you loathe. There’s whisky, olives and mushrooms too.)

How I’ve learnt to love travelling on my own. Not before time, I will admit but better late than never

Red wine spaghetti one of my favourite recipes from the archives

Where the spaghetti is cooked IN red wine. (Sceptical? It works! It comes from my book Wine Lover’s Kitchen which I thought quite a few of you might have already so I didn’t put it behind a paywall)

The two main reads paid subscribers get are The Friday 5 which is a round-up of all the best things I’ve eaten and drunk or good places I’ve been to over the past week. Sometimes it’ll be a special if I’m on the road like this one from Brazil and this other one from Beaujolais.

There’s also an occasional feature called Raise your Game which is about how to do the basic things better like making mayonnaise and cooking rice (honestly, this one is so useful if you suffer from soggy rice).

Plus you get to hang out with me and taste wine online on my new Bring a Bottle nights. 

Anyway do have a snoop and see you shortly, I hope, for my full report on my current Santorini trip - which may be Saturday rather than Friday this week cos I’ll only just have got back.

Fi x