It’s won all the awards and now it’s going out in a blaze of comedy. Everything that could possibly go wrong for the restaurant does … but who cares when the fusion of tragedy and laughter is this good?It may not be a gastronomic reference many midwestern gourmands would appreciate, but the last episode of the last season of The Bear was Marmite TV. Set in the back yard of the titular Chicago restaurant – transformed over the course of the show from a sandwich shop to a fine dining establishment by its talented and troubled head chef Carmy Berzatto (Jeremy Allen White) – the season four finale consisted of the cast shouting over each other about their respective grudges, oscillating between rage and misty-eyed sentimentality. A naturalistic exchange of complex emotional truths? A rare opportunity to flesh out TV characters’ psyches away from the demands of an actual narrative? Maybe. Or a plotless, unpleasantly cacophonous half-hour designed to entertain no one besides those unhealthily invested in the inner lives of Carmy, his protege Syd (Ayo Edebiri) and their ragtag bunch of fictional colleagues? Yeah, I didn’t love it.Whatever your perspective, it’s hard to deny that The Bear is one of the shows that best encapsulates what was so great and not-so-great about peak streamer-era TV. The brainchild of writer-director Christopher Storer, the series always prioritised thematic richness and indie movie melancholy over focus-grouped crowd-pleasing or hoary screenwriting convention. As a result, it walked the line between uncompromising integrity and tedious self-indulgence – something only possible during a period, now passed, when platforms considered pouring money into auteurish shows a price worth paying for cultural clout. Continue reading...

25 Jun 2026 15:00 ✍️ RSS THE GUARDIAN

Will X-Men’s Jean Grey be in the fourth Marvel Spidey film? What about Spider-Girl? Which Hulk will we see? Who is the real villain? And is Marvel fuelling the internet’s frenzied rumour machine on purpose?It’s hard to pinpoint when Marvel trailers stopped being mere hype and started teeing up their own conspiracy theories, but it was probably around the time that early footage from Spider-Man: No Way Home appeared to show the Lizard getting thumped by thin air – and the internet correctly pointed out the recently deleted digital ghost of Andrew Garfield. Since then we’ve had Patrick Stewart’s voice hinting at a Professor X cameo in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, and Wakanda Forever revealing a new Black Panther suit while declining to mention that Shuri was inside it.Now it’s happening again with Spider-Man: Brand New Day. With the fourth Marvel Spidey film out next month, the internet is abuzz with predictions. “This movie is a real mystery,” Tom Holland told Esquire. “And for a large portion of the film even Spider-Man is a little bit at odds and lost and is like, ‘What is going on?’ We’re just trying to find ways to make this movie feel like a detective movie.” Continue reading...

26 Jun 2026 13:30 ✍️ RSS THE GUARDIAN

She was the friendliest dog you can imagine – with an insatiable appetite for jeans, table legs and steering wheels. I will always miss that floppy-eared destroyerHolly, my hyperactive mad hatter of a beagle, was a gift from my well-meaning sister. She was born into a beagle pack who were kennelled in a dog food factory in the Irish town of Edgeworthstown in County Longford. She bounded into my life one sunny evening, a bouncing, dribbling, velvet-eared bundle of puppy energy.From the moment I laid eyes on her, it felt as if we were meant for each other. She quickly figured out that I was a softie, with an abundance of patience and access to her food. Continue reading...

29 Jun 2026 10:00 ✍️ RSS THE GUARDIAN

Francis Tolu works at his family’s restaurant in Spain and also competes in pizza acrobatic contests internationallyFrancis Tolu is a freestyle pizza champion. For those who don’t know what that is, he uses pizza dough to compete in acrobatic performances. He can make pizza blindfolded; he also throws pizzas in the air and sets them on fire. Among his achievements are the 2026 masters acrobatics title at the World Pizza Games, and four wins at the Pizza world championship.Then he returns to work, serving customers at Pizzeria Venezia in Alginet, Spain, the restaurant his family has owned for 40 years. Continue reading...

28 Jun 2026 16:00 ✍️ RSS THE GUARDIAN

There are few things quite like a freshly stewing pan of caponata – here, I’ve made the glossy, sweet aubergines the star of a handy weeknight orzottoI have a core caponata memory, and it doesn’t take place in Italy. It was during my first visit to the Globe theatre in London, which all felt very magical: Shakespeare, an open-air theatre, plus an open-air foyer with a huge, paella-style pan of freshly stewing caponata. I instantly regretted going for a substandard meal beforehand, because in this pan were the glossiest, sweetest-smelling aubergines (with a hint of sour), finished with celery, pine nuts and all the gubbins – I still regret not pushing through the fullness barrier and ordering a portion. Since then, I’ve eaten wonderful caponata and it remains one of my favourite Italian dishes. Here, I’ve incorporated the essence of it into a weeknight orzotto. Continue reading...

29 Jun 2026 12:00 ✍️ RSS THE GUARDIAN

Grains are such a staple of Lebanese cooking that you could devote an entire book to them. Here are two shining examples: a tabbüleh-style southern dish and a Sunni speciality for dessertIf bread is the main staple of Lebanese cooking, grains and legumes are next, and there is hardly a meal without one or the other. Bulgur wheat is the preferred grain, especially for rural communities of all confessions; in the old days, they grew their own wheat to make it, harvesting, threshing and parboiling the wheat before drying it in the sun and sending it to the local mill to be ground into fine and coarse grades to last the household until the next harvest. In fact, given the sheer number of recipes across the country, I could have easily devoted a whole book to Lebanese recipes for grains alone. Continue reading...

29 Jun 2026 05:00 ✍️ RSS THE GUARDIAN

Interpretations of Greece’s most popular street food abound, but whose version of these smoky, juicy skewers is the best?I’m aware that, fittingly, I’m dancing across hot coals by tackling souvlaki: in her book Taverna, Georgina Hayden devotes an entire page to the subtle differences between Greek and Cypriot barbecued meat kebabs (souvla, souvlaki, kalamaki, kontosouvli … the list goes on), yet, as Carolina Doriti observes in her beginner’s guide, “the beauty of souvlaki, Greece’s most popular street food, is its simplicity”. Though I’d steer you elsewhere for a more definitive explanation of what qualifies in different places, the name comes from the word souvla, or “skewer”; souvlaki is the diminutive, and it’s usually cooked on small skewers rather than on a big spit. That’s all you need to know, because – although what’s on there, how it’s seasoned and what accompanies it changes according to region and season – the ancient pleasure of smoky, juicy, grilled meat (as featured in the Iliad!) or indeed vegetables, remains the same wherever you go. Continue reading...

28 Jun 2026 12:00 ✍️ RSS THE GUARDIAN