Tag: provender

Wanstead Magazine Club’s new frontier

The Wanstead Magazine Club – which recycles interesting magazines in public places in Wanstead for the benefit of anyone who’s interested – is from today available in a third venue, Provender.

The club has also been offering a wider range of magazines, including the clearly highbrow (Prospect, New Yorker and London Review of Books), and more populist (Vanity Fair and Wired). Anyone with copies of Elle Decoration, GQ, National Geographic, Good Food, Which or the Beano out there? We think you might, if you examine your conscience, find a small voice telling you that you really ought to share your riches with your Wanstead fellows. Find out more at the Wanstead Magazine Club.

And in the meantime, what better way to make the most of the Farmers’ Market than enjoying a latte and pain aux raisins at the Larder or a spot of petit dejeuner at Provender in the company of some fine reading material.

Wanstead’s Provender makes it to Michelin Guide

Bravo to Provender, the modern French bistro on Wanstead High Street, which is to be named as one of Michelin’s “Bib Gourmands”, a title which denotes “good food at a moderate price”.

There are just 137 restaurants in Britain and Ireland which will be given the title when the new Michelin Guide is published next week, including Rick Stein’s restaurant in Padstow (the full list is available here).

Congratulations to chef Max Renzland, who is noted for his previous restaurants including Monsieur Max in Hampton Hill which was Michelin-starred. Earlier this year he defended his inclusion of pate de fois gras on the menu at Provender, after local Green Party activists called for it to be removed. He said at the time: “You can eat and buy foie gras in any European country because it’s not inherently cruel. There are bad foie gras farms like there are bad chicken farms and chicken is eaten by a far bigger proportion of the population. A tiny proportion of our customers eat it but it’s about freedom of choice.”

You can read reviews of Provender from our own food blogger Suki Orange and fellow Wansteadium readers here.