No matter how fancy the food, a meal in a top-class restaurant can be ruined if the front-of-house staff aren't up to scratch. And in a new BBC series, three-starred chef Michel Roux Jr will teach a group of trainees exactly what that means

My parents were ... very strict when I was younger. They were disciplined with homework, you had to do it straight away, and they were always striving to get the best out of me. Now, I appreciate that; at the time, you just think mum and dad are mean!

Intimate Edwardian country charm comes with the latest modern luxuries, says Minty Clinch

There are tough times ahead, but Roux at Parliament Square is more classy coalition than culinary compromise

Waterside Inn celebrates Michelin success with 25-course meal for culinary royalty

'I love taking a canoe down the River Ardèche'

School meals tsar wants children kept away from fast-food outlets

Michel Roux Jr answers your Christmas Food and Drink questions including: What can I do with a surfeit of goose fat? Where do you stand on sausages in bacon? And what’s a ‘coherent plate of food’?

It was an offer no foodie could refuse – to cook in the kitchen of Albert Roux. Could John Walsh's bavette steak pass muster with this titan of haute cuisine?

When Marcus Wareing became a chef he decided that his favourite childhood pudding made by his Lancastrian grandmother Emily was worth recreating for paying diners.

The fact that Common People is spread across three CDs betrays its fault, which is to have expanded a scene that could be more cogently accommodated on a single disc into something that includes virtually every British pop act of the 1990s, regardless of aptness, worth or narrative shape.

'I was very good at metalwork'

A passion for simple, local ingredients took Mat Follas to Masterchef victory. He treats Sophie Morris to a foraged feast and lets her in on his future plans