mirgraphy

Third week in London and all the moving around between different states of limbo made me forget about blogging. Take Taste Festival for example I went two weekends ago and barely had time to sit down and cull the photos let alone write about it properly. Strangely enough the weather remained sunny two weeks ago and if the weather channel can be believed London is in a middle of a HEAT WAVE (!!) for the next glorious week. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that the rest of July will be as clear and the Blur concert this Thursday will not be an excercise in mass shower.

Anyway back to Taste London 2009 at Regents Park where the number of people crowded in small sectioned area has to be seen to be believed. It was X‘s birthday and going to taste was part of the celebration.  I waited for X and J before we ventured in with out wad of crowns. I didn’t know what to expect, only with a very vague idea that it was similar to the Food and Wine Fair back home with the added pleasure of an entry fee. At around £20 for a general entry it was not the cheapest food event I have been to, particularly with all the added crown vouchers you will still need to purchase in order to buy the meals from the various stalls. The price didn’t stop me from trying it once, particularly as  a number of the restaurants do have their iconic dishes on order and the idea of having access to a smorgabord of the best London can provide was too tempting to miss.

We first wandered to Benares and ordered their Tandoor smoked lamb chops with mint chutney, recommended by my housemate as the value for money buy. Somehow our nose led us to another lamb dish straight away with a cool cocktail of strawberry and rum being a welcome break in the middle.

The second lamb dish wa from Benja a 10 hour low cooked Lamb in Yellow Curry accompanied with cucumber relish. The meat was so tender that it melted the moment it toucher our mouth and much to our delight we notice that we ended up with a bigger portion that expected. That was when we realised that travelling as a pack of three girls had its benefits, all shared dishes we ordered onwards were big enough to feed all three of us.

There were quite a number highlights that day that it’s actually really difficult to blog about it from memory without salivating. The Ledbury’s celeriac baked in Ash with Hazelnuts, Summer Truffle and a Kromeski of Wild Boar was amazing. There was so much flavour packed in this humble root that it made me look at it in a completely different way.

L’Anima’s fettuccine with wild mushrooms and summer truffle deserved a mention as it was more truffle than fettuccine. The lady who was shaving the truffle started laughing as I took a number of photos while she was measuring out the truffle and as a result we ended up with a little mound of the stuff.

From ALAIN DUCASSE AT THE DORCHESTER we had the Chilled pea velouté and ricotta scoop, crispy hazelnut bread, which was a lovely entree dish for a summer day.

As for most expensive dish of the day, nothing beats Launceston Place’s iconic ossetra caviar and parsley lolly at 10 crowns per gram. We were down to our last 8 crowns for the day and perhaps because they felt sorry for us, combined with the fact that it was half an hour to closing we managed to nab a rather heftier serving of 3 grams at the bargain basement price of 8 crowns.

After four hours of continuos eating in the sun, avoiding elbows and over eager gourmettes we found a cuban bar serving martinis playing the entire Flight of the Conchords album. It can’t be a more perfect day…