Welcome to the Gastrodome

As a self-confessed foodie and booze lover, I couldn’t wait for the road-trip we’d planned to Normandy and Burgundy, famous for producing apples and grapes and their respective tipples of cider and wine. And that’s before you even get me started on the cheese board….. Just a hop across the channel, Normandy boasts an extensive…
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None Too Chablis

Some things go off quicker than others. House guests, like fish, go off after three days (or so Benjamin Franklin advised), whilst an opened tin of yellow bean paste I have in my fridge has been prodigiously enhancing my Chinese stir-fries for the past year. Earlier in the summer a friendship with an Antipodean blogger…
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It Sèze It All: Hôtel de Sèze, Paris

Can Paris really accommodate yet another perfectly formed, architect-designed bijou boutique hide away? May wee, as they say in pubs of Bolton.   Madeleine is one of those Parisian areas; an, in-the-know hangout which locals love, but which scarcely flickers on the common tourist radar. And – one says smugly, upon unearthing the secret –…
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Flying to the Paul Ricard Circuit

Here at Lusso we love to travel and we’re also rather fond of a good old road trip. The tried and tested formula of mixing a few of Italy’s finest and adding a preposterously impractical, but suitably rapid support vehicle has served us admirably thus far. Feeling suitably ambitious and ready for our next logical globe…
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Les Enfants Non Terribles: Hotel Le Bristol, Paris

The English language might have 25 different words for walking, but it’s missing a word for one particular kind of love. You and I recognise ‘parental love’ to mean that challenging mix of responsibility, necessary patience and occasional tough love. Do it right and we might see some ‘brotherly love’ between our children and perhaps even…
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Les Manoirs de Tourgeville, France

Robert Clayman travels to the French coast where the Norman invasion was plotted and discovers why they’re considerably more than happy to stay put these days. Those LUSSO readers who are keen followers of my oeuvre (hello to Mrs Glenda Vyber of Port Vale, hope your grandson is well and you got the maintenance cheque as…
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Where the Wilde Things Are: L’Hotel, Paris

There’s only one thing worse than being reviewed by LUSSO and that is not being reviewed by LUSSO. What’s the most famous hotel room in the world? Leaving out the Overlook Hotel’s Room 237 on account of it being fictional (one hopes), Room 16 at L’Hotel, Paris is certainly a strong contender. “Give me the…
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Chateau Bouffement, France

Robert Clayman lounges in a stunning rental, outside of Paris, that redefines the meaning of the word ‘plush’. Jean Renoir’s ‘La Règle du jeu’ (The Rules of the Game) is one of the greatest films you’ve probably never seen. Even in last year’s Sight and Sound Greatest Movies of all Time poll, it was ranked…
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Why You Need to Stay at Saint-Tropez’s Hotel Byblos

A cool white bed sheet is strung across a washing line. Across its surface, the sun-projected shadow of a man, still, waiting. In front of it, laid out across the bottom of the cinema frame, a lithe, tanned, nubile young woman, sunbathing – naked. In 1956, this was how Brigitte Bardot was introduced to the…
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