Jay Rayner
jayrayner1.bsky.social
Jay Rayner
@jayrayner1.bsky.social
Eats and writes for The Financial Times. Piano for the JR Sextet; chairs Kitchen Cabinet for R4. Doesn’t accept comps. jay.rayner@ft.com

https://linktr.ee/jayrayner1
Pinned
Delighted to say tickets for my autumn 2026 Nights Out In The Kitchen tour, celebrating publication of my new cookbook in the autumn of 2026, are now on sale. Join me for a night of serious food chat, brilliant dinner ideas and some ludicrous ones too.
www.fane.co.uk/jay-rayner
Do follow Rhodri for one of the great moments of the year as adults throughout the land, head home for the most age innapropriate Christmas sleeping arrangements in their parents' homes. And help raise a bit of dosh for charity while pointing and laughing.
Tomorrow evening it’ll be my annual duty to vaguely shepherd the activity on the #duvetknowitschristmas hashtag and urge people to give small sums to charity. 7.30pm? Something like that?
December 24, 2025 at 8:49 AM
Safe to say that was a very long half hour to record, and an even longer half hour to watch. Apologies to the good name of Leeds University. But we came up
against the hugely knowledgable force that is the great Lynne Truss.
At 8.30pm on BBC2 I’m on university challenge. It’s an alumni special and I’m there on behalf of Leeds.
December 23, 2025 at 9:01 PM
Ha ha ha ha
You could still clinch it!
At 8.30pm on BBC2 I’m on university challenge. It’s an alumni special and I’m there on behalf of Leeds.
December 23, 2025 at 8:50 PM
At 8.30pm on BBC2 I’m on university challenge. It’s an alumni special and I’m there on behalf of Leeds.
December 23, 2025 at 7:56 PM
Any other Christmas Day cooks in the south east looking at the weather forecast and thinking ‘excellent the shed can become a fridge overflow’?
December 23, 2025 at 12:33 PM
Chris Rea has died at just 74, which really isn’t fair. But I have to say, given his most famous song, it’s impressive timing.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDt3...
Chris Rea ~ Driving Home For Christmas (1986)
YouTube video by TheOldrecordclub
www.youtube.com
December 22, 2025 at 4:46 PM
I always use Claudia Roden’s.
December 22, 2025 at 10:14 AM
Well so much for bloody democracy. I forgot to tick choose one. So now, with only a couple of people left to vote, my attempt to find a favourite has resulted in me having to do both sprouts AND red cabbage. That will teach me.
December 22, 2025 at 8:13 AM
I’ve introduced democracy to Christmas Day vegetable choices. I think this may be a truly lousy experiment. It undermines the dictatorship of the cook but I’m trying to give the impression of benevolence.
December 21, 2025 at 7:38 PM
Some very useful links to stuff about the extreme dodginess of UCKG beneath my original post. It is 23 years since I wrote about their complicity in the death of a little girl called Victoria Climbie. And yet questions still remain to be answered.

www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...
December 20, 2025 at 2:39 PM
Your usual reminder that the UCKG is an extraordinarily shady outfit. It is not clear what the money they collect is for or where it goes. They are collecting all over London today. Avoid.
December 20, 2025 at 12:48 PM
At 10.30am on BBC Radio 4 it’s the Christmas edition of The Kitchen Cabinet. And a very jolly affair it is too. Do hope you can listen.
December 20, 2025 at 9:58 AM
Have some pics from Rosi: pork pie, chicken Kyiv, leather tabard and me in it.
December 20, 2025 at 9:00 AM
For today’s @ftweekend.com I am at Rosi inside the Beaumont Hotel, for classy 70s comfort food redux: pork scratchings, the best fish fingers, chicken Kyiv and a leather tabard worn to protect against garlic butter splashback. Such fun.

www.ft.com/content/e050...
Leather tabards. Pork scratchings. Flaming desserts — Jay Rayner reviews Rosi, London
The food of the 1970s could sing, and here it does so with indulgent flair
www.ft.com
December 20, 2025 at 8:09 AM
Going live in 10 minutes.
Still wondering what you'll cook this Christmas? Let food writers Jay Rayner, Tim Hayward and Bee Wilson be your guides by joining our live text-based Q&A on FT.com on Friday 19 December at 11am GMT ft.trib.al/TYXVqYx
Submit your questions to Jay Rayner, Tim Hayward and Bee Wilson: What should I cook this Christmas?
Take part in a live Q&A with three star food writers on Friday 19 December at 11am GMT
ft.trib.al
December 19, 2025 at 10:51 AM
I see that Ronnie Scott's has booked the saxophonist Gilad Atzmon, the self-declared 'self hating Jew' who once wondered aloud as to whether 'in the future some might be bold enough to argue Hitler was right after all'.
cst.org.uk/news/blog/20...
Gilad Atzmon: what you see is what you get – Blog
cst.org.uk
December 19, 2025 at 10:36 AM
Loads of questions already but there's room for more on top.
Still wondering what you'll cook this Christmas? Let food writers Jay Rayner, Tim Hayward and Bee Wilson be your guides by joining our live text-based Q&A on FT.com on Friday 19 December at 11am GMT ft.trib.al/TYXVqYx
Submit your questions to Jay Rayner, Tim Hayward and Bee Wilson: What should I cook this Christmas?
Take part in a live Q&A with three star food writers on Friday 19 December at 11am GMT
ft.trib.al
December 18, 2025 at 5:44 PM
I endorse this message.
December 17, 2025 at 3:11 PM
In a rush of blood to the head the @financialtimes.com has asked me, @timhayward.bsky.social and @kitchenbee.bsky.social to answer all your christmas cooking queries. It's all gravy. Or quite a lot of it might be. Live, Friday from 11am. Submit questions at the link below.
www.ft.com/content/13dd...
Submit your questions to Jay Rayner, Tim Hayward and Bee Wilson: What should I cook this Christmas?
Take part in a live Q&A with three star food writers on Friday 19 December at 11am GMT
www.ft.com
December 17, 2025 at 3:09 PM
This column by @stephenkb.bsky.social on the antisemitic mass murder in Australia, reflecting on the justifications for acting on ancient hatreds, is very good indeed. Depressingly comments have not been enabled. Because they couldn’t be.

www.ft.com/content/4209...
Bondi attacks show old hatreds are flourishing again
A permissive environment has been created in which Israel is conflated with all Jews, everywhere
www.ft.com
December 15, 2025 at 5:57 PM
I missed this when it went out last Sunday but it’s there on iplayer for three or so more weeks. A brilliant show about a brilliant man. Hard recommend.

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...
BBC Four - Sammy Davis Jr at the BBC
A collection of some of Sammy Davis Jr’s finest moments on British television.
www.bbc.co.uk
December 13, 2025 at 3:27 PM
Great episode of the kitchen Cabinet coming at 10.30am on BBC Radio 4. We’re in Dundee talking shortbread and claret. With Sarah Rankin, Rachel McCormack, Paula McIntyre and James Jocky Petrie.
December 13, 2025 at 9:05 AM
Have a few pics from this great dinner. Trout roe tarts. Buffalo chicken wings. Trout on a sake beurre blanc. Chocolate and caramel.
December 13, 2025 at 8:29 AM
And I’m back. For today’s @ftweekend.com I’m at the lovely Vetch in Liverpool, being shown how a complex tasting menu can be done with grace, wit and skill in a way that doesn’t ever become tortuous. Oh those buffalo chicken wings.

www.ft.com/content/3c4b...
A restaurant that restored my faith in tasting menus — Jay Rayner visits Vetch in Liverpool
In an age of self-important philosopher-chefs, this charming and clever eatery offers multi-course dining without a hint of pomposity or pretension
www.ft.com
December 13, 2025 at 8:05 AM
Farewell to the great Stanley Baxter, one of the true comedy greats of the postwar era.
www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio...
Actor and comedian Stanley Baxter dies aged 99
Baxter enjoyed a decades-spanning career on radio, TV and film, and was famous for impersonating famous people including Queen Elizabeth II
www.theguardian.com
December 12, 2025 at 2:27 PM