Food and drink news for the discerning consumer
Wednesday, 16 September 2026
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English Whisky GI Faces Appeal Over ‘Scotch-Style’ Rules
Liam Hirt, founder of Circumstance Distillery, has announced his intention to appeal Defra’s decision to approve the new English Whisky Geographical Indication (GI).
The protected status is due to be added to the official register on 1 October 2026, following a 20-day notice period.
Hirt supports the principle of protecting English whisky but objects to parts of the specification submitted by the English Whisky Guild, particularly the definition of Single Malt English Whisky.
Under the approved rules, single malt English whisky must be double distilled using copper pot stills. Hirt argues that this requirement follows the Scotch whisky model too closely and fails to represent either England’s own distilling heritage or the varied production methods being explored by modern English distilleries.
“The Scottish model isn’t wrong; it’s contrary to the English traditions,” he said. “It is like making the English wear kilts," he told That's Food and Drink.
His formal objection was deemed admissible under the relevant grounds for opposition, and Defra asked Hirt and the English Whisky Guild to hold discussions. However, he says those talks failed to resolve the disagreement.
Hirt believes the specification should have taken greater inspiration from the Welsh Whisky GI, which he says draws upon international approaches and allows Single Malt Welsh Whisky to distinguish itself more clearly from Scotch.
He warned distilleries complying with the English GI could end up producing spirits that are difficult to distinguish from Scotch, while some of the industry’s more experimental producers may have to operate outside the protected category.
That, he argues, could create a confusing situation in which innovative whisky made in England cannot be marketed as “English Whisky” under the GI.
Producers using protected terms will also need to be verified through HMRC’s Spirit Drink Verification Scheme, bringing additional requirements and costs.
The dispute comes as English whisky is expanding rapidly. Defra says more than 70 distilleries now produce whisky in England, compared with 46 in 2023. English whisky is exported to over 30 countries, while an estimated £1 billion worth of spirit is currently maturing in casks.
The GI is intended to protect the provenance and reputation of English whisky. However, Hirt maintains that protection must be broad enough to embrace the distinctive character, history and inventiveness of England’s emerging whisky industry.
He says he will appeal if the original specification remains unchanged, potentially beginning a lengthy process to amend the new GI.
Siren Craft Brew Strengthens Links to Reading Football Club
Comprising a website and podcast with over 700 episodes, The Tilehurst End has chronicled the ups and downs of Reading Football Club from the final days of Sir John Madejski through to the present day.
The partnership is the latest piece of a puzzle that has seen Siren Craft Brew take over as official beer supplier to the Reading FC fanzone, located at the Select Car Leasing Stadium, and Siren's RG1 bar hosting its first live football podcast event with The Tilehurst End, at the end of the 2025/26 season.
As part of the sponsorship, Siren's RG1 bar in Central Reading will continue to host live Tilehurst End podcast events as the 'home away from home' for supporters travelling from Reading Town Centre. The next live podcast event is scheduled for the Bradford City home game on Saturday, October 3 (time to be confirmed).
There will be Siren giveaways throughout the season on the podcast and exclusive monthly prize draws for Patreon members. Additionally, all Tilehurst End listeners can use code Tilehurst10 to receive 10% off their next Siren Webshop order over £30.
Pictured are Ben Thomas of The Tilehurst End and Andy Nowlan, Marketing Manager at Siren Craft Brew.
Ben Thomas, The Tilehurst End podcast host told That's Food and Drink: "I'm delighted to welcome Siren Craft Brew as our main podcast sponsor here at TTE. We've developed a strong relationship over the last few months, and I'm really pleased to make it 'official'.
"There are lots of things for our fans to look forward too, including more live pods, giveaways of merchandise and beer and having a stronger presence at their flagship bar, RG1. I'm grateful for the support they have shown us and the faith they have put into our podcast and with Siren now holding a space at the stadium in the fanzone, there is lots of scope for collaboration moving forward.
George Upton, General Manager, Siren RG1 in Central Reading commented: "We're incredibly excited to get closer to Royals fans working alongside the best RFC podcast! We love that Siren are part of the fanzone and we can support them by being the home for all reading fans in the town centre itself! Especially being so close to the station too."
Friday, 11 September 2026
Move Over Cadbury! KitKat Is Britain’s Most Social Sweet Brand
However, new research suggests that, on social media at least, KitKat is the nation’s top treat.
Digital marketing consultant Chris Laas analysed well-known confectionery brands identified through YouGov, comparing the number of Instagram and TikTok posts featuring each brand’s hashtag.
KitKat claimed a remarkably comfortable victory, appearing in 4,316,600 hashtagged posts across the two platforms. That total includes 3.9 million Instagram posts and 416,600 TikTok posts.
The chocolate-covered wafer bar also has 1.1 million Instagram followers. On TikTok, it has attracted 480,000 followers and 1.7 million likes.
Created by Rowntree’s in York in 1935, KitKat remains one of Britain’s most recognisable confectionery creations. According to YouGov, an impressive 98% of people have heard of the brand, while 79% view it positively.
Swiss chocolatier Lindt took second place with 1,678,500 hashtagged posts, including 1.6 million on Instagram. Cadbury, founded in Birmingham by John Cadbury in 1824, finished third with 1,329,400 posts.
The complete social-media top ten was:
KitKat – 4,316,600 posts
Lindt – 1,678,500
Cadbury – 1,329,400
Maltesers – 809,600
Twix – 788,600
Cornetto – 701,300
Toblerone – 653,400
M&M’s – 385,000
Terry’s Chocolate Orange – 147,500
Magnum – 114,100
There are a few interesting surprises here. Maltesers achieved the highest stated YouGov popularity score among the leading five brands, at 84%, despite placing only fourth for hashtag posts. Twix, meanwhile, enjoys almost universal recognition, with a fame score of 99%, and an 81% popularity rating.
This demonstrates that social-media activity and traditional measures of public affection are not necessarily the same thing. A hashtag post may feature recipes, advertising, nostalgic memories, collecting, reviews or even criticism. Nevertheless, millions of posts represent valuable exposure for a brand.
Chris Laas said social-media engagement can reveal a brand’s cultural and commercial strength beyond simple name recognition. He highlighted that Cadbury enjoys 99% recognition, yet KitKat generates more than three times its volume of social-media posts.
Perhaps KitKat’s success should not be surprising. Its familiar red wrapper, memorable advertising and simple “break” ritual make it particularly easy to photograph, share and reinvent online.
Cadbury may still occupy a special place in Britain’s confectionery history, but in the battle of the hashtags, KitKat has snapped off a decisive victory.
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Rise to the Challenge: Who Will Be Crowned the World’s Best Chelsea Bun Maker?
Now in their eighth year, the awards are hosted by Royal Warrant holder Partridges of Kensington, the family-run food shop on Gloucester Road.
The competition brings professional bakers, enthusiastic amateurs and talented young cooks together to celebrate one of Britain’s best-loved baked treats.
This year’s theme is “Traditional Chelsea Buns Meet Innovation,” giving entrants the opportunity to respect the bun’s rich heritage while adding a little imagination of their own.
Will we see unusual spices, locally produced ingredients or unexpected flavour combinations? Or will a beautifully made traditional Chelsea bun prove impossible to beat?
Two Ways to Enter
The competition includes separate categories for professional and amateur bakers, with children under 18 also welcome to take part in the live event.
Bakers can enter through Instagram by sharing a photograph of their creation before 10am on Friday 18 September. Entries should use the hashtag #worldchelseabunawards and tag @world.chelsea.bun.awards.
Those who want the judges to taste their creations can enter the Live Competition. Buns must be delivered to the Partridges Al Fresco Terrace, 17–19 Gloucester Road, London SW7 4PL, between 10am and noon on Sunday 20 September.
Postal entries may also be accepted by prior arrangement, provided they arrive at Partridges in time.
A Festival of Food and Community
Judging will take place during the Gloucester Road “North” Autumn Street Festival on Sunday 20 September.
It promises to be a wonderfully sociable occasion where visitors can eat, shop and celebrate while supporting local independent businesses. Traders will be offering a tempting selection of food and drink, so there should be plenty to enjoy even if you are not entering the competition.
Guests will include Councillor Janet Evans, Mayor of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. Judges include former chef, food business owner and television and radio presenter Mark Wogan, alongside Alice Ryan, senior editor of lifestyle magazine Velvet.
Prizes include cash awards and Partridges hampers. The overall Live Tasting Winner will receive £250 and the rather magnificent title of Best Chelsea Bun Baker 2026.
Baking for a Good Cause
Entrants are also invited to donate to Partridges’ chosen charity, React. The charity provides rapid and practical assistance to children with life-limiting illnesses living in financially disadvantaged households across the UK.
The Chelsea bun is reportedly the only bun in the world to have received a Royal Warrant, making this a very special celebration of British baking heritage.
Whether you are an experienced professional, an enthusiastic home baker or a young cook ready to demonstrate your skills, this is your chance to rise to the occasion.
Who will be crowned the world’s finest Chelsea bun maker in 2026? We cannot wait to find out!
Enter here: https://www.worldchelseabunawards.com
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Could the Mobile Shop Be Ready for a Comeback?
Mobile grocers, butchers, fishmongers and other travelling shops were once a familiar sight in British towns and villages.
There were mobile fish and chip vans, delicatessens, bread vans and even shops selling household necessities including paraffin for heaters.
Then shopping habits changed.
Supermarkets offered enormous ranges under one roof, car ownership increased and weekly supermarket shopping became normal. Later, out-of-town retail parks and online shopping put even more pressure on traditional doorstep traders.
But could the mobile shop now be ready for a comeback?
Working from home changes the equation
One important difference is the number of people who now spend at least part of their working week at home.
A mobile delicatessen arriving in a residential area at lunchtime could suddenly have dozens of potential customers who simply wouldn't have been there during the traditional working day a couple of decades ago.
Imagine a mobile bakery offering freshly baked bread, cakes and pastries pulling up at 11am. Or a travelling delicatessen selling cheeses, cooked meats, olives and locally produced foods.
Rather than driving to the supermarket, you walk 100 yards down the road.
Technology solves an old problem
Modern technology could make the business model considerably easier.
A mobile shop could announce its location and arrival time through Facebook, WhatsApp or its own app. Customers might even pre-order their groceries before the van arrives.
Contactless card readers mean traders no longer need to operate predominantly with cash, while relatively inexpensive mobile technology can handle stock control, accounting and customer loyalty schemes.
Essentially, today's mobile shop could combine an old-fashioned personal service with 21st-century technology.
Rural communities could benefit
There could be an especially important role for mobile shops in villages which have lost their local stores.
A travelling grocer carrying vegetables, milk, bread, eggs, meat and everyday essentials could provide a valuable service, particularly for older residents and people without cars.
Several specialist traders could even work together, creating a miniature travelling market visiting different communities on particular days.
Food trucks have already proved part of the idea
In some respects, mobile food retail never completely disappeared.
Ice-cream vans survived, while food trucks have become enormously popular. Farmers' markets, street-food events and pop-up businesses have also demonstrated that consumers don't necessarily require a conventional shop.
So why shouldn't the same principle work for groceries?
Picture a refrigerated mobile fishmonger visiting on Thursday, a baker on Friday morning and a cheesemonger or delicatessen on Saturday.
There might even be room for the return of the mobile fish and chip shop.
There are obstacles
It wouldn't necessarily be easy.
Fuel, vehicle purchase and maintenance, refrigeration, food hygiene requirements, licences and insurance all cost money. Finding enough customers along a route to make each stop worthwhile would be essential.
But today's trader has one enormous advantage over their predecessors: they can know who's buying before they arrive.
Pre-orders could dramatically reduce waste and allow a mobile butcher, baker, greengrocer or deli to carry exactly what customers have requested alongside stock for passing trade.
Perhaps the future looks surprisingly familiar
Retail constantly reinvents itself, but occasionally the best new idea turns out to be an old one.
At That’s Food and Drink, we'd love to see independent mobile shops appearing in our streets again – particularly if they provide opportunities for small producers and give communities another alternative to the supermarket.
Perhaps one day we'll once again hear a familiar horn outside and someone shout:
"The grocer's here!"
Would you buy from a mobile grocer, baker, butcher, fishmonger or delicatessen if one visited your street every week? And if you remember the old mobile shops, we'd love to hear what used to call in your neighbourhood.
Incidentally based not far from where we live there's a mobile bookshop!
Are There Too Many Burgers on the Menu?
In a specialist burger bar or an American-style barbecue restaurant, customers naturally expect to find an extensive selection.
Burgers are central to the identity of such establishments, so plenty of choice makes perfect sense.
But have burgers become far too dominant on the menus of ordinary pubs, cafƩs and other food and drink venues?
One well-known pub chain, which shall remain nameless, currently offers no fewer than 16 different burgers. That is a remarkable amount of menu space devoted to variations on essentially the same meal: something served inside a bun, generally accompanied by chips.
Customers may be offered beef burgers with bacon, cheese, barbecue sauce, chilli, fried onions or several of those ingredients piled together. There may also be chicken, plant-based and double or triple versions. Although these dishes have different names, how much genuine variety do they really provide?
Meanwhile, many traditional favourites appear to have vanished.
Why are there so few chicken pies, ham pies or turkey pies? What happened to dishes such as ham, egg and chips, liver and onions, sausage casserole, cottage pie, Lancashire hotpot or a proper ploughman’s lunch? Even relatively simple options such as filled jacket potatoes, substantial salads and sandwiches can be surprisingly difficult to find.
Burgers undoubtedly offer practical advantages to pubs and restaurants. The ingredients can be standardised, preparation is relatively straightforward and numerous menu variations can be created from the same basic stock. They are also familiar, easy to advertise and generally popular.
However, allowing burgers to dominate a menu risks making the dining experience rather dull. Offering 16 burgers does not necessarily mean customers are being given 16 meaningfully different choices. Four or five good burgers alongside pies, casseroles, fish dishes, salads and traditional pub meals might provide much greater variety.
There is also the danger that pub menus are becoming increasingly interchangeable. When every venue offers several burgers, fried chicken, pizza and chips, much of the individual character disappears. A visitor could travel from Shropshire to Cornwall or Yorkshire and encounter almost exactly the same dishes.
Perhaps pubs should concentrate less on the number of toppings that can be squeezed into a bun and spend more time rediscovering regional dishes, traditional pies and imaginative home-style cooking.
Burgers certainly deserve a place on the menu. The question is whether they deserve quite so many places.
What do you think? Are 16 burgers excessive, or do you welcome having plenty of burger options? Which neglected pub dishes would you like to see make a comeback?
Thursday, 10 September 2026
Cromwell’s Tap House, Shrewsbury. An Independent Pub Worth Seeking Out
And there's rather more history behind that attractive frontage than you might initially suspect.
The building housing Cromwell's is Grade II listed and probably dates from the late 16th century. It was formerly known as the Warwick Hotel and, according to CAMRA, was originally a private house before becoming a hotel during the 1940s.
Today, however, it's an independent tap house, restaurant and hotel, and its independence is one of its most interesting features.
A free-of-tie beer selection
For us at That’s Food and Drink, one of Cromwell's biggest attractions is the beer.
CAMRA describes the pub as completely free of tie, meaning that it isn't restricted to buying its beers from one particular brewery or pub company. Consequently, its pumps can feature beers that aren't necessarily encountered elsewhere around Shrewsbury.
CAMRA says there are usually around three real ales available, sometimes including relatively unusual choices.
That's precisely the sort of independence we like to see. A modest number of well-chosen and properly looked-after cask ales can be considerably more interesting than a large row of pumps containing exactly the same nationally available beers you can find in dozens of other pubs.
The drinks offering extends beyond real ale, with Cromwell's advertising craft beers, wines and cocktails, while local and national breweries feature in its changing beer selection.
They stock Jeremy Clarkson's Hawkstone Lager and his Hawkstone IPA on draught. A very tasty IPA, which I was fortunate enough to try for the first time at Cromewell's Tap House.
Food that's a little more interesting
Cromwell's also takes its food seriously.
Its current menu includes homemade seasonal soup, halloumi fries with mango mayonnaise and wild mushroom, garlic and thyme bruschetta with a choice of Shropshire Blue or vegan smoked cheese.
There's also a rather tempting combination of venison and pork meatballs in tomato and basil sauce.
Even the sandwiches venture beyond the completely predictable. Options listed include a curried bacon BLT and beer-barbecue-marinated jackfruit.
It's recognisably pub food, but with enough imagination to make you stop and read the menu properly.
Vegetarian, vegan and gluten-free options are also identified.
Don't miss the garden
One of Cromwell's less obvious attractions is hidden behind the building.
Shrewsbury and West Shropshire CAMRA describes its rear beer garden as "lovely", while Shrewsbury's official visitor guide calls the secluded garden a local favourite.
On a warm afternoon, that's another very good reason to wander up Dogpole.
An interesting alternative in a great pub town
Cromwell's isn't enormous inside, and that may actually be part of its appeal. This is an historic building rather than a cavernous modern drinking barn.
Online customer feedback is overwhelmingly favourable, particularly concerning the food, service, beer and atmosphere, although, as with virtually every pub, individual experiences inevitably vary.
What particularly appeals to us is the combination: an historic Shrewsbury building, an independent free-of-tie pub, unusual real ales, proper food and a secluded beer garden.
It's also within easy walking distance of the town centre's other excellent pubs, making Cromwell's an obvious candidate for inclusion in a Shrewsbury pub crawl, although we'd suggest taking your time rather than treating it simply as somewhere to rush in and tick off the list.
Shrewsbury has developed a deserved reputation as a destination for people who enjoy good pubs and good beer. Cromwell's demonstrates why.
Cromwell’s Tap House & Hotel
11 Dogpole
Shrewsbury
SY1 1EN
https://cromwellstaphouse.co.uk
01743 365158
That’s Food and Drink verdict: An appealing independent Shrewsbury pub with history, character, food and, most importantly for the beer enthusiast, the freedom to put something genuinely interesting on the hand pumps.
Sometimes the best ideas for That’s Food and Drink arrive while we're eating and drinking.
My wife and I were sitting in Cromwell’s Tap House in Shrewsbury, enjoying a couple of absolutely excellent steak baguettes, when I looked around at the historic timber beams, the beer badges decorating the bar and the impressive selection of beers and thought: Why haven't we featured this place before?
So, somewhat appropriately, the idea for this review of Cromwell’s was born in Cromwell’s.
Incidentally hotel accommodation is available.
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