Thomas Marks is an associate fellow of the Warburg Institute, London.

How X. Marcel Boulestin catered to the masses

The restaurateur and writer won over both the smart set and the middle classes – and was a hero to Elizabeth David

28 Jul 2023
still life overlooking a river

Fine dining with Patrick Caulfield

The painter’s atmospheric restaurant interiors and precise still lifes put him at the top table

7 Jun 2023
La Grande Bouffe film still

Punishment for gluttons: La Grande Bouffe at 50

Marco Ferreri’s ode to eating may be one of the most disgusting films about food ever made

17 May 2023
Restaurant dining room with views over the City of London

Supper in the City at the Barbican Brasserie

The arts centre’s new restaurant is not exactly a feast for the eyes, but the food more than makes up for it

28 Mar 2023

The Dutch painters who kept their eyes peeled for citrus fruit

The Low Countries may not grow oranges and lemons, but the artists of the region certainly had a zest for them

22 Feb 2023

Knives out – the fine art of carving meat

In the 17th century, tips for carving could often be gleaned at the card table

27 Jan 2023
Sarah Lucas

‘Eggs are rarely as simple as they seem’

A new book turns the staple into a star and unscrambles its significance beyond the kitchen

1 Jan 2023

An appetite for art – sampling the Tate’s Cézanne-inspired menu

A menu designed to accompany the gallery’s survey of the artist pays homage to the flavours of Provence, but doesn’t quite live up to the works on show

28 Nov 2022
Edward Allington

Surreal suppers – the Japanese art of artificial food

Shokuhin sampuru (food models) may serve the promotional function of luring diners into restaurants but the creation of each replica is a delicate craft

24 Oct 2022
Auguste Escoffier

The Provençal chef who defined French cooking

Auguste Escoffier’s childhood home in a tiny French village is now a museum that tells the tale of a playful dining visionary

26 Sep 2022

How gastronomic maps paved the way for regional French cooking

The first gastronomic map of France may have been created to serve the appetites of greedy Parisians, but it also opened up new ways of eating

30 Aug 2022
A Jewish family home in Baghdad

A culinary education – Claudia Roden’s ode to Jewish cuisine

Twenty-five years after it was first published, ‘The Book of Jewish Food’ remains an invaluable record of the Jewish diaspora and its manifold culinary traditions

27 Jun 2022

Fresh flavours at the National Gallery’s new restaurant

The gallery’s gloomy dining room is now a thing of the past. The restaurant has an elegant new look and menu to match

30 May 2022

Elizabeth David’s taste in Old Masters

Suspicious of photography’s ability to illustrate her colourful accounts of culinary history, food writer Elizabeth David looked to the Old Masters instead

28 Apr 2022
Natura morta con aragosta e rapanelli (1938), Cagnaccio di San Pietro. Private collection.

The Venetian painter whose still lifes look good enough to eat

Cagnaccio di San Pietro grew up in a Venetian fishing village – so it’s no surprise seafood stars in his still lifes

5 Apr 2022
food museum exhibition

Something to savour – at the new Food Museum in Suffolk

An East Anglian museum is turning its attention from the field to the table with provocative results

24 Mar 2022
Meat-shaped stone, China, Qing dynasty. National Palace Museum, Taipei

The art of making stone look good enough to eat

Rocks that resemble food may not be appetising exactly, but they can certainly be a feast for the eyes

4 Mar 2022
Vinette Robinson and Stephen Graham in Boiling Point (2021). Image courtesy Vertigo Releasing

How to turn up the heat in a feature film? Make your actors cook in real time

Philip Barantini shot his 90-minute movie about the drama of a busy restaurant service in one take – and it’s nail-biting stuff

30 Nov 2021
Putting the kitsch in kitchen: Paris Hilton is ready to cook.

Paris Hilton takes a leaf out of Jane Austen’s recipe book

The venerable tradition of copying out recipes in household books lives on in the most unexpected places

27 Sep 2021
The ‘Table Talk’ room at the Museum of the Home, London. Photo: Em Fitzgerald

Food for thought at the Museum of the Home

With Apollo’s food column to fill, Thomas Marks heads to the reimagined museum in East London to inspect its kitchens

28 Jun 2021
Tableau piège – Sevilla Serie Nr. 16 (1991), Daniel Spoerri. MOCAK the Museum of Contemporary Art in Krakow.

The frozen dinners of Daniel Spoerri

The Swiss artist’s tableaux of tables capture the joys of dining in good company

9 Jun 2021
Supra man: a detail of one of Niko Pirosmani’s feast scenes, included in an exhibition at the Albertina, Vienna in 2018–19.

The jobbing artist who became Georgia’s national painter – thanks to his eye for a feast

Niko Pirosmani’s paintings are a testament to Georgian conviviality – although he didn’t always have a place at the table

19 Apr 2021
Steak night: Dario Cecchini grills a rib-eye, inspired by a still life by Jacopo Chimenti

A taste of the Uffizi, with Tuscany’s top chefs

Videos of top Italian chefs chewing over the Uffizi’s collection have a delightfully homemade flavour

1 Mar 2021
The National Gallery, closed and an empty Trafalgar Square on 24 March 2020. Photo by Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

If shops can reopen in April, why can’t museums?

Museums in England will have to wait until May to reopen but shops, gyms and libraries are set to open in April. What’s the logic in that?

22 Feb 2021