Xanthe Clay

Xanthe Clay is a long-standing food writer and columnist at The Telegraph whose work combines supermarket taste tests, practical home cooking advice and clear-eyed analysis of how and what people eat. Her coverage stands out for its consumer focus: she tests everyday products, interrogates received wisdom about diets and food ethics, and offers recipes and techniques that are designed for real kitchens and real budgets. Drawing on professional experience as a chef and on leading roles in food-writing organisations, she writes with both hands-on technical knowledge and a strong sense of the wider food landscape.

Supermarket taste tests and value for money

Clay is closely associated with The Telegraph’s regular taste-test series, in which she compares staple supermarket products to find the best value for money. In pieces such as “The best and worst salad cream (and Heinz isn’t top)” she sets out structured comparisons, looking at flavour, texture and price to help readers decide what to put in their shopping basket. Her work on supermarket confectionery follows the same pattern: she has written about “the best and worst supermarket white chocolate bars,” using vivid sensory description – including lines about “a hint of rancid pork fat” – to differentiate between mass-market options. Earlier taste tests have taken on familiar staples like vanilla ice cream, where she led a session with readers focused on a flavour that is both everyday and technically revealing. Across this strand of her coverage she treats supermarket shelves as a core part of modern food culture, and approaches them with a mix of testing discipline, humour and a clear brief to steer readers towards better choices at realistic prices.

Home cooking, frugal meals and kitchen know-how

Alongside testing products, Clay writes extensively about how to cook well at home, drawing on her background as a chef and decades of recipe writing for The Telegraph. Her author page highlights guidance on everything from roasting a Christmas turkey to baking the perfect loaf of bread, signalling a focus on classic dishes and technique that many home cooks attempt. Recent work has combined this confidence with a strong interest in budgeting: in “The easy ways to cut your Christmas dinner costs” she turns a major festive meal into a practical exercise in saving money without losing quality. In “I tried wartime recipes to see if rationing was actually good for us” she tests historical dishes in her own kitchen to examine whether nostalgic claims about rationing and health stand up when cooked and eaten today. She also develops specific recipe formats for everyday scenarios, such as a miso marinade for a solo barbecue built around accessible Japanese ingredients. Her coverage of equipment debates, including a piece framed as “Slow cooker or air fryer? It’s the ultimate kitchen debate,” looks at how tools, energy use and convenience shape contemporary home cooking. Taken together, this strand is practical and service-led, with a strong emphasis on technique, thrift and making good food with the tools and budgets most readers already have.

Food systems, health and ethical questions

Clay’s work often steps back from recipes and products to probe wider claims about nutrition, sustainability and ethics. In “The truth about vegan food – and why it isn't as healthy or as eco-friendly as you think” she challenges popular assumptions about plant-based diets, examining concerns around processing, ingredients and environmental impact. Her reporting on British produce that is “really worth waiting for” looks at seasonality and supply, asking why foods from certain regions, including Welsh products, can be harder to find in mainstream supermarkets even when they are high quality. In other pieces she has explored the global sourcing of everyday ingredients, contrasting items like strawberries from Greece, lamb from New Zealand, lobster from Canada, asparagus from Mexico and green beans from Morocco to show how international supply chains shape what appears on British tables. Work such as her wartime recipes feature also touches on public-health narratives, using historical diets and scarcity to test ideas about what constitutes a “healthy” way of eating today. Across these articles she writes in a direct, unvarnished tone, giving readers enough detail to weigh complex questions about health and sustainability without assuming simple answers.

Dining trends and the restaurant scene

Clay also covers the way people eat out, focusing less on traditional restaurant reviews and more on formats and movements reshaping the dining landscape. Her piece on “micro restaurants” looks at very small, chef-led spaces, examining how they operate, the intimacy they offer and what they mean for chefs who want tight control over menus and service. She has reported on vegan and vegetarian restaurants in the context of the rapid growth of vegan options on menus, linking specific venues to broader questions about how veganism is changing the restaurant business. Her role as an academy chair for the UK and Ireland for The World’s 50 Best Restaurants gives her regular exposure to fine-dining developments, while her writing often returns to how such trends filter down into more accessible food culture. This strand of her work connects the restaurant world to home cooks and supermarket shoppers, treating eating out as part of the same ecosystem of taste, cost and values that runs through her columns.

Clay has been a food writer at The Telegraph for over twenty-five years, and that long tenure underpins the breadth of her coverage, from classic technique pieces to sharply observed consumer journalism. She combines this with active roles in the food-writing community, including work as a trustee of the Andre Simon Awards and leadership positions at the Guild of Food Writers, which keep her close to debates about standards and innovation in food media. For anyone following her work, the through-line is consistent: she treats food as something people buy, cook and argue about every day, and she writes to help them navigate those choices with more knowledge, better flavour and a realistic sense of cost.