This is the tag line for the range of Taste Festivals held in the UK this year: “Imagine a picnic in a park. Now multiply it by thousands of people. Invite all the best restaurants in the area to contribute the food, and discerning vintners to bring the bottles. Make sure some of the guests are famous chefs happy to help out with cooking hints, and organise live music to eat and drink by. This is a Taste Festival.”

The Taste Festival for London was held at Regent’s Park this weekend. Sandra was able to score us some half-price tickets so of course I jumped at this opportunity to maybe see a famous chef but more importantly experience food from restaurants I’ve always wanted to go to.

I hadn’t realised beforehand that there were so many restaurants to choose from (over 40) so when arrived at Regent’s Park our first task was to sit down and work out exactly what we were going to eat. This schedule also had to fit in with any of the shows or cooking demonstrations we wanted to check out. Restaurant dishes were priced at between 6-10 crowns per dish (a crown, the Festival currency, being worth 50p) so we quickly realised that our £20 pounds worth of crowns weren’t going to last us very long!

As we had so many restaurants we both wanted to sample our tactic was to both go through the list and check-off any restaurants we wanted to eat at and then go with the matching restaurants. We actually did end up getting quite a few matches though, not unexpectedly, I wanted to eat at a lot more restaurants than Sandra did. In the end this is what we sampled:

Kai Mayfair: Wasabi prawns – tiger prawns with a spicy wasabi mayonnaise alongside little cubes of mango and Thai basil seed (10 crowns)

Rhodes Twenty Four: Braised beef with caramelised onion gravy (10 crowns)	Launceston Place: Roast middle white pork risotto, crackling with apple sauce (10 crowns but discounted down to 6 crowns)	Cocoon: Wagyu beef – slices of wagyu beef on hot rocks with champagne teriyaki (10 crowns)

Club Gascon: Grill quail, juicy ratatouille and crunchy rosemary (10 crowns)	Cinnamon Club: Stir-fried shrimp with black pepper and curry leaves (10 crowns)	L’Atelier du Joël Robuchon: Langoustine – crispy langoustine fritter with basil pistou (10 crowns)

Skylon: Alphonse mango fresh mint jelly with creamy tapioca (8 crowns)

This may seem like a lot but portion sizes are TINY and as we shared our portions were even smaller! (Which, as you will read later, is one of my gripes about this festival.)

This is what we missed out on and though I could have opted to get it in the end I just couldn’t deal anymore with the aggressive crowds:

– Arbutus: Braised pigs head, potato puree, caramelised onion
– Canteen: Spit roasted pork with mash and gravy
– South Beauty: Spicy Rib

Some other well-known restaurants with a presence, whose offerings actually entice, included Le Café Anglais, Le Gavroche, Nahm, One-O-One, Pearl, Theo Randall, and Zilli Fish.

Although the restaurants were a major feature of the Festival there were also other features such as the “Taste Kitchen” which allows you to take part in an interactive and educational tasting session experiencing British produce whilst you learn from top chefs with masterclasses and cooking demonstrations; “Taste Wine” conducted by experts in the wine industry; and the “Taste Theatre” where you got to see some of the UK’s most famous chefs in action. Form what we saw the cooking was background to the Q&A session that it actually turned out to be . We saw Marcus Wareing who is one of my favourite chefs for his clean lines in his cooking. He was actually very engaging and charming during the session. Surprisingly funny (because he has always seemed so square in the past.) The hot topic of the day was his “break-up” so to speak with Gordon Ramsay at their restaurant Petrus.

Further there was the “The Amoy Experience” which had cooking demonstrations from the UK and China’s most renowned restaurants and some masterclasses and finally the “Producers’ Market” which, with The Bertinent Kitchen, was a hands-on cookery class. As you can imagine this last event filled up very quickly.

In addition to the above there were lots of exhibitors who were showcasing their products but more for our interest were giving out lots of free samples. These exhibitors included Bonne Maman Traditional French Patisserie, FIJI Water, all sorts of wines etc., Grand Marier, Gu chocolate Puds, Jazz Apples (who actually had a bobbing apple competition), Nintendo, Onken, and Simply sausages.

Finally, in addition to all of the above there were plenty of “bars” and areas to sit and relax and enjoy the atmosphere. There was entertainment in the form of live music so walking about you really got a sense of a buzz and excitement about the festival.

It was overall quite a positive experience and I really enjoyed the whole atmosphere and getting to try lots of samples of food (both at the restaurant and from exhibitors) but having said that I do have a few minor grips:

– The Value For Money Gripe: in addition to having to pay an entrance fee to come to Taste of London I felt that the prices for the restaurant food were very high in proportion to the size of the portions we received so be prepared to spend money to fill your stomach up.
– The Enjoyment Factor Gripe: overall I really enjoyed the Festival but the crowds were surprisingly aggressive when buying their food from the restaurants. This surprised me considering the restaurants were highly unlikely to run out of food and it wasn’t as if the food was free – everyone had to pay their crowns to get the food.
– The Environmental Gripe: Although all plates, bowls and cutlery are recycled when I saw the rubbish and litter scattered all over tables and the like it still felt like a terrible waste of resources.

However, I don’t regret attending the Festival and I’m very grateful that Lofty thought to offer me a ticket. Definitely a good experience to have and also I’m definitely more excited than ever to try all the restaurants out.