Jay Rayner

Jay Rayner on Nights Out At Home

Broadcaster and Observer restaurant critic Jay Rayner presents decades of memorable meals in his cookbook-memoir Nights Out At Home.

This September, join him in St Andrews for an evening of culinary inspiration!

A memoir-in-recipes inspired by Jay Rayner's quarter of a century at the table, recreating dishes he has loved from high-end restaurants, high street grills, and everything in between.

'For the past twenty-five years, I have been reviewing restaurants across Britain and beyond, from the humblest of diners to the grandest of gastro-palaces. And throughout I've been taking the best ideas home with me to create glorious dishes for my own table. Now I get to share those recipes with you.'

In Nights Out at Home, Jay Rayner's first cookbook, the award-winning writer and broadcaster gives us delicious, achievable recipes inspired by the restaurant creations that have stolen his heart over the decades, for you to cook in your own kitchen. With sixty recipes that take their inspiration from restaurants dishes served across the UK and further afield, Nights Out at Home includes a cheat's version of the Ivy's famed crispy duck salad, the brown butter and sage flatbreads from Manchester's Erst, miso-glazed aubergine from Freak Scene and instructions for making the cult tandoori lamb chops from the legendary Tayyabs in London's Whitechapel; a recipe which has never before been written down. It also features Jay's irresistible, MasterChef Critics-winning baked chocolate pudding with cherries, and his own personal take on the mighty Greggs Steak Bake.

Seasoned with stories from Jay's life as a restaurant critic, and written with warmth, wit and the blessing, and often help, of the chefs themselves, Nights Out at Home is a celebration of good food and great eating experiences, filled with irresistible dishes to inspire all cooks.

Jay Rayner is an award-winning writer, journalist and broadcaster. He has been the restaurant critic for The Observer since 1999 (garnering millions of views per year), has presented the award-winning BBC Radio 4 show The Kitchen Cabinet for over a decade and is the author of a dozen books, most recently My Last Supper and Chewing the Fat. His varied television work includes his role for 15 years as a critic on MasterChef, food reporting for the BBC's One Show and forming part of the expert panel on Top Chef Masters in the US. In March 2023 he was named Critic of the Year, in the UK Press Awards.