Welcome to Freeloader. This is a newsletter for people who like to live beyond their means. Written by longtime gluttons Joe Bishop and Kieran Morris, we’ll be rounding up as many things from the world of hospitality that we’ve blagged our way into once a month.

We want to take you lovely readers into the bursting belly of the beast. No mewling about restaurant queues or business rates – just banter, booze, banquettes and blinis. We put the weight on so you don’t have to. 

In our inaugural edition, Kieran documents a much-anticipated lig to Uzbekistan, eating dodgy lamb and witnessing knife fights with an international tour group. Then Joe heads west (or from Streatham, north) for the low down on Martino’s, as well as a star-studded dinner at London’s most confounding three-star, Sketch. But before we could do any of that, we had the Michelin Guide ceremony to get through. 

The good ship Michelin Guide chugged into Dublin town like a sickly cartoon tugboat last week, and, as ever, we lucky few could pretend we were there by watching the livestream. Each year we’re given a tantalising 1080p glimpse into the biggest date in the fine dining calendar, and every year it’s amusingly shocking how shonky the entire operation is; terrible hosting, awkward appearances from chefs and sponsors, archaic video vignettes. For something that looms so large in the hearts and minds of chefs worldwide, the actual ceremony has as much charm as a COVID Zoom funeral. 

Hosting duties were split this year, with Amanda Stretton joined by Clarkson’s Farm regular and girlfriend of Jeremy Clarkson, Lisa Hogan. Stretton maintained her usual level of ripe professionalism, while Hogan sort-of slurred and stammered her way through proceedings like a laudanum-addled star of Golden Age cinema. 

In what must have felt to the organisers like a bit of a coup, the old rogue Gordon Ramsay joined the hosting pair on stage for the one-star reveals. Fashion has never been fine dining’s strong suit, and the Big Dog was no exception, pairing a white t-shirt with a waistcoat and jacket, and a pair of those trainers. You know the ones. He looked like he was doing punditry on a Championship game for TNT Sports. 

Among the newly ennobled, there were a couple of surprises. Nieves Barragán’s Legado, which we thought was meant to be a more accessible and cheaper Sabor, snagged a star right at the start. Expect an extra tenner slapped on that Segovian pig dish in short order. Tom Brown continues his controversial redemption arc with a star at his restaurant in The Capital, imaginatively named ‘Tom Brown at The Capital’. Ambassador’s Clubhouse exemplified Michelin’s new tradition of giving a star to any Indian restaurant that is expensive and in central London, though the vastly superior Kutir in Chelsea continues to evade the inspectors.

It’s always revealing to watch these chefs, who spend most days in the galley, banned by investors from interacting with normal people, having to do some impromptu public speaking. Adam Handling, dressed like a disgraced Soviet gymnastics coach, bumbled up to the mic and delivered a charmingly ham-fisted speech about his restaurant Ugly Butterfly. Spare a thought, too, for the chubby chefs who had to remove their comfort blazers before taking to the stage to receive their new starred chef whites. There was more body dysmorphia in that room than a private girls’ school. 

To the fury of republican restaurateurs everywhere, this ceremony is the one of the few times that Ireland is considered part of the UK, and so the one stars finished with the actually-quite-sweet reveal of Dublin’s Forest Avenue getting their due. This could have been the highlight of the evening, but instead, we give the gong to Amanda Stretton for almost shouting out ‘Jay Slater’ instead of Jay Styler, head chef of Camberwell’s one-starred Kerfield Arms.

There were no new three stars this year (booooo), but we were treated to the looming presence of Matt Abé, whose new restaurant Bonheur, in the bones of the old Le Gavroche, went straight in with two. And, to the surprise of literally no one, Spencer Metzger and Jason Atherton’s Row on 5 was awarded its second. Strangely, Atherton thanked his ‘Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ’ in his speech with the evangelistic passion of a post-fight Tyson Fury. Maybe he’s gone all method, ahead of his headlining bout against Andy Beynon at next month’s charity boxing event.

The stream ended with everyone’s favourite bulbous mascot Bibendum strolling out like a Chernobyl liquidator ready to execute a warehouse full of dogs. So, that was this year’s Michelin Guide ceremony. It was weird and it was clunky. Just the way we like it.

I'd been trying to get to Uzbekistan for, no exaggeration, seven years – ever since haranguing a PR for the 'Stans at the World Travel Market in 2018. As a 21-year-old working for Vice's short-lived luxury travel vertical, it was my job to run around giddily, drink all the free ale each stand was offering, and see who'd send me somewhere. I got very close to nabbing a trip to the Russian Far East to follow an ice hockey team, and a trip to Serbia with the ultras of Partizan Belgrade – two trips that would most likely have seen me battered in an alleyway. Neither came off. But I left with a name lodged in my head: Uzbekistan.

Through the intervening years, I kept pestering. I'd originally been slated to visit last summer, but I couldn't get a piece commissioned in time. Devastated, I begged. I expressed "deep disappointment" in an email I still wince to recall. And it worked. The PR informed me that the Uzbek Embassy was planning a ten-day 'Global Media Campus', and put my name forward. Very shortly after, I got a call from a guy called Azambek who told me, in characteristic Uzbek directness, that I had been accepted.

That first night after arrival, I opted out of the group dinner to prowl around the environs of our hotel, knowing no Russian beyond whatever I could glean from Bald and Bankrupt's many sex tours of the former Soviet Union. I was starving, and was torn between going to a roadside stall selling shashlik – stall is pushing it; it was three tracksuited blokes and a barbecue, not even an awning – or trying to play it safer.

I found a bakery selling lamb somsas, then a takeaway staffed by fifteen-year-olds advertising something called a ‘xaggi’ – pronounced exactly like Shaggy, basically a kebab baguette. They did not, however, have a rotating spit – just a plastic bowl of grey doner meat, circled by flies, which was microwaved then mashed into a panini for 25,000 som (£1.55). The xaggi ended up being nicer than the somsas, which were inedibly greasy and tasted, as lamb sometimes can, of cruelty and sheep shit.  

We were eighteen journalists on an all-expenses-paid odyssey across Central Asia – two Brits, some new pals from Karachi and Budapest, a pair of Berliners and another pair of Turks, delegates from Armenia, Malaysia, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, and four Chinese influencers who documented everything with ring lights and selfie sticks. Within days the group had splintered into factions. Mine met nightly outside hotel lobbies, passing around duty-free cigarettes and griping about the itinerary. We watched knife fights break out between butchers in Tashkent’s central bazaar, uncovered replica Nazi memorabilia in the flea markets of Bukhara, and toured about three-dozen mosques across the country, all styled in the same pearly-blue hue.

In the smokers' cabal outside a tourism expo in Tashkent, we bummed a light off a young ex-conscript from Turkmenistan called Serdar. "The President's name," he informed us, unprompted. He showed us hundreds of pictures on his phone: the marble-white capital, Ashgabat; him in military fatigues; beach shots with his friends. At the end he asked for our numbers, in case we ever needed to get into Turkmenistan. Naturally, instead of giving him a fake, in the time-honoured tradition of smoking-area mates I gave him the real one. He started texting me the day after and has periodically done so since, charmingly asking what the weather's like in London. "Shit mate," I reply.

He wasn't the only Turkmen to leave an impression. On our group's final dinner, we were inexplicably joined by a cheery, heavy-set tour operator from the expo. He didn't know a word of English, but over twenty minutes he gave me four cigs, a tomato salad, his WhatsApp details, £2 in Turkmen money, and seven shots. Blessedly, I was retrieved from his corner of the table as he uncorked the second bottle of vodka, or that might've been the end of me.

I am now, inevitably, obsessed with Turkmenistan. I will make it my mission to go, if anyone will have me. For free, obviously.

Andy Hayler is our favourite guy. He’s the only food critic we actually like and respect. For our first newsletter, we asked the big man to tell us about something that’s annoying him. Please enjoy.

In Mayfair’s gilded dining rooms, the wine list often reads like a ledger of aspiration rather than value. Mark-ups routinely inflate bottles by two, three, sometimes four times wholesale, testing even the most patient oenophile’s tolerance.

A £30 supermarket Burgundian suddenly becomes a £120 “restaurant exclusive,” complete with sommelier flourish. It’s not just numbers on a menu — it signals a wider tension between genuine curation and commercial exuberance. One unnamed restaurant is flogging La Renaissance, Château Belle-Vue Bhamdoun, Lebanon 2016 for £285 a bottle. This can be found retailing in at least one London shop for £24.

True luxury should elevate the experience, not the bill alone. Until Mayfair’s restaurateurs recalibrate respect for provenance and price, many will sip with admiration, but also with a weary eye on the cheque.

The gallery-cum-tea-room at Sketch - which compared to the rest of the venue’s wonky mix of egg shaped toilets and neon phosphenes is quite demure - was having its artworks replaced. Jonathan Baldock, who works with ceramics and fabrics, created eighty-four charming and colourful masks with expressions ranging from overjoyed to furious to constipated. 

In attendance, along with Baldock’s mother who received a near-standing ovation by dint of merely existing, were the financially unsettled tailor Ozwald Boateng, the separately seated Fashion East directors Raphaelle Moore and Lulu Kennedy, and our table-mate for the evening Zack Pinsent, a 31-year-old living history enthusiast who only owns and wears garments from the Regency era. 

At the start of the evening, Zack asked me if I knew why the spines of the forks on the table were facing downward. As it turns out, this was to prevent a lady’s lace sleeves being pierced by impertinent cutlery, at a time when such things were de rigeur. A very interesting aside largely useless today, something Pinsent is very well versed in. (He also had a sharp attachment on his shirt upon which he hooked his napkin, like a kind of dandy Inspector Gadget). 

The menu was a Gagnaire special, starting with a delicate scallop carpaccio, and followed by an incredibly indelicate (compliment) truffled venison pate. The wine was an unexpectedly very good Menetou-Salon, considering the volume of it that came out. 

If it tickles your fancy, head down to Sketch, blast a couple of ‘shrooms down your gullet and watch as Baldock’s ceramic Thwomps leer deliriously down at you as you grab the soft pink banquette and hang on for dear life.

I’m tired of pretending that west London isn’t good. I’m tired of the perverse, aching, derelicte mindset that has run roughshod over the minds of tastemakers across the city. West London is nice. It has the V&A. You can lay a wreath for Diana at Kenny Palace. You can get some cut price Loro Piana at the Gloucester Road Trinity Hospice. The houses are nice to look at. Is it a bit lame? Sure. Are the pubs filled with the sort of people who, if you were inappropriately given a seat of high power, you would demand be fed into a wood chipper? Uh, yeah. But not everywhere has to be a Monopoly board of wet markets and branches of Jolene. 

Sometimes not being able to see into a restaurant can be a bad sign. Frosted glass obscuring your view from the outside occasionally means the inside is hiding something dirty and grave. No one normal wants to eat in a branch of Stringfellows. But with certain gaffs, it adds to the allure of exclusivity. And for those inside, an opportunity not to have to observe the horrors of the proletariat existing. This is the sort of place Martino’s is - a thoroughly Sloaney enclave where you can pretend it’s 1978-1986. You know, the good old days. 

The menu also has a touch of this anachronism. It’s long by today’s standards; eight starters, seven pastas, seven mains, three pizzas - and there’s no fucking around either. Carpaccio, linguine frutti di mare, meatballs and toast. You will not pine for Chicken Selects after a meal at Martino’s, rather you will have to butter up the doorframe of the Uber Exec to be jammed in. 

The red prawn crudo was the star of the starters, resting in a pool of olive oil and topped with torn basil. Sea bass carpaccio was soft and brightly coloured, speckles of red from tomato and green from jalapeño. 

A spicy chicken ‘diavola’ with some cubed spuds exemplified the muscular simplicity that Martino’s is clearly going for - charred, piquant, juicy and moreish. Ditto the meatballs with sourdough toast, with little chunks of carrot in the ragú, lovingly added by the unsteady hand of a varicose-vein-addled ‘nonna’. 

The way I’ve been describing Martino’s to people is ‘posh Ciao Bella’. This might sound like damning with faint praise, but it isn’t; it’s a vibey place, where the food is good but ultimately secondary to the atmosphere, to the desire to get smashed, to take a sexy selfie in the sultry bogs. Go for a special west London night out, when the posho mood takes you, and ask the world a question: anyone mind if a white boy speaks a little RP tonight?

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That’s it for our first edition. What will we do next time? Genuinely, we don’t know yet – it depends what we’re invited to – but sign up to find out. If you’d like us to pad out your next guest list, send us something at [email protected]. And if you enjoyed this, please do send it on to the other greedmongers in your life.