On this day twelve years ago, we first opened the doors to Brassica Restaurant.

What a glorious summer it's been, and wonderfully busy here in West Dorset. There's a distinct autumnal feeling in the air now, though I'm sure the sun has a few more days left in it…September is a beautiful month, bountiful with produce to forage and buy from our wonderful local and organic suppliers. It's a fairly long newsletter but hopefully packed with information to keep the winter blues away.

Thursday 24th September - Made in India by Meera Sodha
From Guardian columnist Meera Sodha - real Indian food which is fresh, simple and packed with flavour. In Made in India, Sodha introduces us to the food she grew up with everyday.

Thursday 8th October - Squeeze Me: Lemon Recipes & Art 
by Ruthie Rogers & Ed Ruscha 
An ode to the simple, sunny brilliance of the lemon, this is a one-of-a-kind cookbook and collaboration between Ruthie Rogers, the celebrated chef behind London’s River Café, and Ed Ruscha, one of the most influential contemporary artists and bookmakers of our time, who cultivates a lemon grove at his home in Los Angeles.
Thursday 29th October - Thai Food by David Thompson
'Thai Food' is the most comprehensive account of this cuisine ever published in English, with David Thompson sharing over 300 recipes ranging from a classic pad thai to elaborate creations like Green Curry of Trout Dumplings. Introductory chapters cover Thai food culture, ingredients and technique, rounding out this beautifully written guide.
Thursday 12th November - Honey & Co. Daily
Honey & Co Daily is about food that looks good and tastes sensational without taking all day to prepare, based on the relaxed, informal menu Itamar and Sarit serve at their Store Street café — from Eggs and Soups to Salads, Daily Nightly dinners, Cookies and Cakes, and speedy Cocktails and Desserts. From a summery Courgette & Broad Bean Shakshuka to Ginger & Chocolate Cookies. 

Thursday 26th November
Instead of ‘Cooking the Book’s Cass will host a special evening where he will cook a number of his favourite Japanese-inspired dishes.  Menu to be confirmed but it will be delicious…

Now the Summer season is over, we will introduce our Prix Fixe Lunch, two courses for £28 from Tuesday 8th September.  More often than not it will be a delicious pasta dish and a seasonal pudding.  The menu will change daily according to availability.

Candles: New, novelty candles crafted by hand in the UK. Fallow Candles is a Sussex-based studio turning the humble candle into sculptural, extraordinary pieces — part art, part object. On sale now in Beaminster and online.

Books: New books on art, design and cooking — online and in store in Beaminster. Highlights include the trio by Charles Dowding, pioneer of the "no dig" growing method, showing undisturbed, compost-fed soil beats traditional digging.

For the last five years or so, I've secretly created, wrapped and sent off Christmas Stockings for a couple of high-profile customers — unbeknown to the women receiving them. Their husbands, understandably nervous about curating the perfect stocking themselves, handed the problem to me instead. I don't think any less of them for it — quite the opposite. I know exactly what it takes to fill a stocking that feels genuinely thoughtful, where almost everything inside is something truly loved. This Christmas, I'm opening this service up properly — for husbands, wives, partners, or anyone who'd rather leave the stocking-curating to someone who's had five years of practice getting it right and over thirty years as a retail buyer. The finer details haven't been finalised yet, but do let me know if you are interested.

Loving Cremer, the new London café by Hoxton's Museum of the Home — designed by Oscar Piccolo with Spazio Leone's Gennaro Leone, it's full of commissioned pieces from rising international designers and feels like “the home of someone with impeccable taste”.

Burro is the second restaurant from Conor Gadd, chef-owner of Trullo, one of Islington's best-loved Italian neighbourhood restaurants (founded by Tim Siadatan and Jordan Frieda, and still one of the finest Italian kitchens in London). With Burro, Gadd moves into a much bigger space in the centre of town — and brings a bit of his Irish background along with him.

Set beside the River Gavenny, the 17th-century Little Mill Abergavenny pairs Welsh Mountain views and wild swimming spots on the doorstep with a charming vintage interior rustic walls, a folky colour palette, and antique furniture. This family-run holiday let offers the historic 3-bedroom Felin and the luxurious 1-bedroom Maen Melin Cottage, available separately or combined. Together, they open into one large rental space 
sleeping up to 11 guests.

Hadspen Valley is a modern, Somerset cider orchard with design-led huts, nestled in a secret valley between Bruton and Castle Cary. More a ‘wild hotel’ than glamping.

War plunges you into London's cutthroat legal world, as rival firms Cathcarts & Sons and Taylor & Byrne go head to head over a scandal-soaked case. At its heart is a dirty-tricks divorce between Morgan (West) and Carla (Miller), pulling ambitious young lawyer Johnny Warren (Archie Renaux) into the fray. Expect a ruthless world where ambition is currency, betrayal is strategy, and winning is everything.

Starring Sam Rockwell and John Malkovich, Wild Horse Nine drops us shortly before the 1973 Chilean coup, as CIA agents Chris and Lee are sent from Santiago to Easter Island by their bureau chief, MJ. Amid the island's iconic statues, the longtime partners wrestle with dark pasts and present conspiracies — while Chris's newfound bond with a pair of rebellious students threatens to send the whole trip sideways.

Netflix is developing a six-part drama based on Roald Dahl's short stories for adults, written by Danny Brocklehurst of Fool Me Once fame, with a cast that includes Nicola Coughlan, Imelda Staunton, and Dominic West. It's the latest project drawing on Dahl's work since Netflix bought the Roald Dahl Story Company in 2021, following the earlier greenlight of Willy Wonka-inspired competition show The Golden Ticket. Early next year.

London Design Festival runs from 12th September for a week.  The Victoria and Albert Museum will host a number of events including 'Awakenings'. Artificial intelligence takes centre stage. As part of this year's Emerging Design Commission, Playfool presents a game reflecting on human labour in the age of AI, while an installation from Nina Davies examines how human bodies are starting to mimic AI-generated movement.
Later in the month, on 25th September there is a fantastic event which can also be Livestream (for those of us outside of the city) where costume designer Grace Snell holds a special conversation exploring the creation of the costumes for the new big-screen adaptation of beloved Jane Austen novel Sense and Sensibility. The talk will give an unprecedented insight into Grace’s creative process bringing Austen’s world to life through costume and the role of costume in conveying identity, emotion and social status on screen, as well as touching on Grace’s career journey along the way.

Held in the National Galleries of Scotland in Edinburgh, Strange Beauties is the first major retrospective in over forty years dedicated to Welsh painter Gwen John (1876—1939). One of the first generation of women to receive a formal art education, John studied at the Slade School of Art in London, before settling in Paris. The exhibition showcases celebrated oil paintings and rarely seen drawings, ranging from her early years in Wales, through to experimental late works inspired by John’s religious beliefs, French modernism, and her surroundings in the Parisian suburb of Meudon. Marking 150 years since the artist’s birth, Strange Beauties offers a fresh new perspective on Gwen John’s work and artistic legacy.

Tim Walker's photography has always lived somewhere between fashion, theatre and fantasy — since the '90s, his images have fused couture, elaborate staging and constructed worlds into portraits where setting shapes identity as much as the sitter does. Fairyland: Love and Legends, opening at the National Portrait Gallery from 9 October 2026, carries that visual language somewhere new: a portrait of queer lives, communities and histories. Around 250 newly commissioned portraits, five years in the making, bring together activists, artists, performers and public figures — from Ian McKellen and Isaac Julien to Miriam Margolyes and Chappell Roan — placing different generations of queer history in the same frame.

Painting the Riviera at the Royal Academy looks at how the French Riviera supported the rise of modern art – and later became a travel destination and film location that epitomised midcentury sophistication. The story will come alive through more than 160 works, including paintings, sculpture, travel posters and film, from the 1870s to the 1960s. To Monet, it was like "swimming in blue air." To Braque, a "joyful revelation." Derain compared its cerulean hues to "sticks of dynamite….primed to discharge light."

The rise of independent food stores has gathered real momentum over the past few years. London Épicerie feels a touch contrived and pricey, but it's definitely worth a ‘comparative shop’ when I'm next in London. Opened on Ebury Street in Belgravia, it's from Jared Wybrow and Raissa van Dijk, the pair behind London Cheesemongers, bringing seasonal produce, fresh bread, dairy, farmhouse cheese, charcuterie, wine and pantry essentials under one roof — built on over a decade of producer relationships, with the idea that you shouldn't have to choose 
between convenience and quality.

Kraft Heinz has created an adjustable 'Love Lid' for its ketchup bottles, designed with Beta Design Office and Wieden+Kennedy London to let users snap it into different positions and control the flow, much like an adjustable hose nozzle. Fitted to the same bottom-flip bottle design, it offers three settings — Like, Love, and Crazy Love. 
I'm not a huge fan but loved this idea.