Fiona Sims

Fiona Sims is a food, drink and travel writer with 25 years experience of writing for the UK's top newspapers and magazines.

* started her career in food and drink at Taste magazine, then moved to Inside Hotels magazine as deputy editor, followed by leading hospitality weekly Caterer & Hotelkeeper as interiors & drinks editor, before going freelance. She now divides her time between her home office in London (a hut at the end of her garden), pretending to work in her other home on the Isle of Wight, and travelling the globe.  

* has written for many different magazines and newspapers, including The TimesThe Telegraph, The Sunday Times, The Guardian, Delicious, Food & Travel, Sphere, Aston Martin magazine, National Geographic Food, Decanter and The Caterer.

* has extensive editing and commissioning experience, both editorial and commercial, and is currently editor of Island Visitor magazine, a consumer lifestyle magazine for the Isle of Wight. Other highlights include content editor posts on luxury food brand websites, such as Maille, and she has edited books for other luxury brands such as Godiva chocolate and Rolls-Royce, and edited the best-selling Illustrated Royal Weddings magazine for Illustrated London News.

* has written four books, Guide to Wine (Parragon) and Wine Made Simple (Marks & Spencer), and her first cookery book, The Boat Cookbook, was published by Bloomsbury Adlard Coles in April 2014. This was followed by  The Boat Drinks Book , which was published by Bloomsbury in May 2017.

 

 

* interviewed many of the world's top chefs, food and drink personalities and hoteliers, including Gordon Ramsay, Wolfgang Puck, Charlie Trotter, Alain Ducasse, Ferran Adrià and Elena Arzak.

* travelled to top restaurants with some of the world's most famous chefs  - accompanying Heston Blumenthal on his first trip to the legendary El Bulli in Spain

* organized the UK’s first international women’s chef event with top British chef Angela Hartnett - watch the video

* read about some of her jaunts in recent articles through the following links, from her quest for la France profonde in the Auvergne and her mission to find the best ham in Italy for The Times, to asking the country's top chefs and food writers for their ultimate food experiences for exciting new food magazine National Geographic Food, and trying the best English Wines for The Caterer. Though highlights from the past year have to include her week cycling around Cava country on an e-bike, getting intimate with a turbot in Getaria in Basque country, and a booze cruise (sorry, wine voyage) to end them all on a superyacht around the Med, all for The Times. And there's nothing she likes more than a good old nerdy chat with a famous chef about what makes them tick, such as Heston Blumenthal at The Fat Duck and Claude Bosi at Bibendum, for her favourite industry mag, The Caterer - and now increasingly for The Times, too, for which she extracts top chefs' favourite places to eat, among them Anne-Sophie Pic on the Rhone Valley and Giorgio Locatelli on Rome

 

Fiona Sims

Contact

fiona@fionasims.com
fionas@the2fionas.com
Twitter: @2fionas
Instagram: fionasims

Skills

Feature writing (including food-related travel features), 'opinion' and other topical columns, editing and commissioning, trendspotting, interviews with chefs and food producers, winemakers and distillers, restaurant reviews, recipe development (food & cocktails), recipe editing, matching food and wine, beer and other drinks, conducting tastings, copywriting, plus menu and wine list consultancy. Excellent contacts in the food, drink and travel world.