Category Archives: Events

The Graduation

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One year in the making Mirela was awarded her Masters today. The year has fairly flashed by since I met her and she began her Masters. Mirela jokes that in my reviewing and editing her assignments I contributed somewhat to her award. Ha ha. I ended up taking half a day from work to attend the graduation which was held mid-afternoon at the Barbican. I’ve never actually been into the Barbican and I must admit it was an impressive and nice venue for the graduation. When I arrived the Barbican was fairly buzzing with all the students and friends and families milling about.

For some reason Mirela’s class (admittedly pretty small with about 15 graduating students) was being awarded their Masters with the School of Architecture students. The graduation ceremony itself was not very exciting. Various official people gave some speeches with a guest speech and honorary distinction being awarded to some dude who, though graduating with fairly average marks, has gone on to be revolutionary in charitable work in building and architecture. After he gave his speech is was a matter of sitting through and clapping through what felt like a couple of thousands of students! It did go by very quickly but my hands were a bit sore from all the clapping. Sadly two students had died since finishing their course so their degrees/masters were awarded posthumously. As you can imagine they got some of the biggest claps and congratulations.

Tickets to the graduation ceremony had to be paid for and this was to cover, presumably, the hire of the hall, tea/coffee/champagne/juice and biscuits. The price, which I can’t recall how much, was pretty cheeky really for what was served.

After the ceremony we headed to a nearby Italian where Mirela’s parents shouted the bunch of us (the family, Enrique (Mirela’s boyfriend), Mirela’s cousin Harry, Sabrina (who had also finished her Masters but had chosen not to go to the ceremony) and Sabrina’s boyfriend) the celebratory dinner which was nice of them!

We finished the evening by heading over to St Katharine’s Docks near Tower Hill for a couple of drinks. St Katharine’s Docks is really very pretty and it’s a shame to say I’ve never been there in my years in London. By the time we got there it must have been about 9.30 or so – so it wasn’t too busy and actually most restaurants/bars seemed to be closing. However the Prohibition Bar was still open for business. Actually part restaurant part bar Prohibition was pretty cool. There was also plenty of seating as it was relatively quiet. Drinks were impressively reasonable and different from the usual offerings – including the non-alcoholic versions.

The night couldn’t last too long as we all had to get up before 5 the next morning so that everyone could catch their flights to Madrid so we managed to catch pretty much the last tube home. Hopefully Mirela had a nice day today!

Good Food Show 2008

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Nearly three years ago I braved the Festive Good Food Show at Earl’s Court so I thought it was time to whip around again. On this occasion we also purchased premium tickets (£50!) for a Food Icon “cookery” session with Nigella Lawson but more on that later.

As with the Good Food Show in 2005 the lesson of the day is to make sure you arrive early not only to make it easier to make your way around the stalls but also to allow you to get free tickets to any cooking sessions such as that put on the by the Co-Op this year. Other events include the Tasting Sessions (extra £ on top of show entry) and for the first time this year there was also a Producers’ Village which this year was host the Slow Food pavilion.

The Restaurant Experience this year featured Blue Elephant, Roast, La Porte Des Indes, Smiths of Smithfield, Kai Mayfair, Café Spice Namaste and a few more. Circling the restaurants early on we knew we wanted to try Smiths of Smithfield’s Roast Pork Belly … mmmm ….

Walking around the venue I was surprised at just how many wine/beer/spirit stalls there were. They certainly seemed to outnumber the food stalls on the lower ground. As we got there for opening it seemed just a tad early to be hitting the alcohol but I could see that didn’t stop many of those around me!

It didn’t take us long to circulate all the stalls in all honesty and that included the Producers Village (where we ran into Sam and Stu!) The sampling on offer was quite generous but after a while I got a bit bored of “competing” to get a sample. I couldn’t understand the people who stood in front of the stall taking up space even though it was clear that they had no interest in the product on offer.

As I said earlier the Co-Op were putting on live cooking demonstrations and we’d picked up tickets for the fish session. It was a good session – the chef was quite good with interacting with the crowd and gave some helpful tips. The best bit was that we got to eat what he cooked at the end of the session! 🙂

The highlight of the day and the reason we paid the big bucks was to have a session with Nigella Lawson. I find here so very funny and I think its the fact that, despite how she glamourous etc. she always appears, she is an extremely down to earth person with no airs whatsoever. The fact she also constantly admits that she’s greed is just even more charming. A woman after my own heart.

Although we were in the Cookery Experience she didn’t really do much cooking – she made something out of her latest book – a Christmas recipe book – which was basically a decoration for the tree. Really it was just a way to introduce the Q&A session which subsequently followed. During this session I became even more impressed with Nigella. She’s smart, funny, witty and actually does know her way around the kitchen. She also came across as wanting to genuinely help people with their cooking queries. I walked away very impressed.

Finally, we finished our morning at the Good Food Show with the Pork Belly from Smiths of Smithfields. It was amazing! Melt in your mouth tender with the crispiest pork crackling – delish. Can’t wait to head to the restaurant to have a full serve.

Overall the Good Food Show was just about what I expected it to be. Lots of food and drink sampling and a few cooking and product demonstrations. As we were leaving I couldn’t believe just how crowded it was getting but also the number of people who’d opted for the VIP package – credit crunch or not its definitely not stopping people getting good food into their stomachs.

Alexandra Palace Fireworks

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I missed all the Guy Fawkes night celebrations this week as it was on a Wednesday and I’ve been too busy at work (and working too far out of central London) to try and tee up an event but I couldn’t miss out on fireworks completely this year so with my fireworks buddy, Sandra, we headed off to Alexandra Palace.

Alexandra Palace is a tourist destination on its own merit but I’ve never been (something to rectify for sure.) It boasts beautiful views over London and proved to be a perfect place to see the fireworks – not only those that were put on at the Palace but also all of those going off across London at people’s homes, other greens and even the ones over near Canary Wharf.

To ensure that the event at Alexandra Palace was a hit for everyone it even had a carnival happening near the entrance at the bottom of the hill which had all sorts of rides including the giant Booster (which I think I’ve seen at the Brighton Pier.) I really wanted to ride it because it looked like a mad ride but Sandra was still feeling to full from our ribs at Monkeynuts. To be fair if we’d gone up I’m quite certain the ribs would have come up and out onto the people below us – not something they would be pleased about I’m sure.

There was also apparently a beer hall somewhere to celebrate a belated Oktoberfest but by the time we climbed the hill to get a good position for the fireworks there were so many people around we had no chance of getting through the crowds.

Even without fireworks tonight the setting would have been beautiful. The view truly was amazing and I could have sat up there all night. Thankfully the weather decided to take a kind turn and it stayed most of the late afternoon and all evening.

Before the fireworks started the crowd was entertained with music blasting from the loudspeakers which would later play the music to accompany the fireworks. Although Sandra thought the effort at Battersea last year was better I was just happy to see fireworks in any situation. I just can’t get enough of them.

Fright Night – Halloween

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Well, I’ve been up for about an hour now and its very clear to me that partying until the early hours of the morning (3.30am by the time I got to bed to be exact) just doesn’t agree with this old body of mine anymore. I’ve got a pounding heading from the small amount of alcohol I drank last night (two very strong vodka, bitters and lemonades), I’m still slightly deaf from the music at the club, my voice is as rough as anything and well, I’m ready to get back into bed for the rest of the day! ha ha.

Leah had a friend, also from Aus but currently living in Dublin, come to stay with her this weekend so she thought we should hit the town on H-night. I’ve always wanted to do something for Halloween but it never seems like I’ve got anyone interested in dressing up with me or I’m never organised enough to sort something out for the night.

Both Leah and I ordered some costumes online at the last minute, from separate websites, as getting to a costume store was going to be difficult but unfortunately neither of our costumes arrived despite the both of us paying for priority postage. I should have looked like the pic on the left (well not so sexy and most definitely with fatter thighs and chunkier legs) but instead of my going as a Vixen Vamp I just went as ordinary me. 🙁 Still, we were all set for a night out so a lack of costume wasn’t going to stop us.

We all got ready at Leah’s house with a few drinks and Leah knocked up some pizzas and munchies for us to snack on. Lauren was the only one of us whose costume actually turned up and though she was reluctant to be the only one out of the four of us wearing a costume we finally convinced her that everyone but us would be dressed up and that we’d be the odd ones out!

To get into the spirit of things though we all had a go with her witchy hat:

We were having so much fun at Leah’s house that it wasn’t until nearly 11.00 that we actually left to head out to a club! Getting on the tube I was so jealous of all the people in their supercool costumes – it seemed that most people were sticking to the Halloween theme of Michael-Jackson-Thriller-Esque zombie looks and we got Lauren to pose with a few of the punters. The guy in the end picture was particularly scary:

We finally decided that we were up for yet another cheeesy night out so we headed to Inferno’s in Clapham. The last time I was here was a party bus back in 2006 so its been a while since I’ve visited this notorious venue. There are two floors for dancing with the ground floor dance floor having a stage for live performers. We started upstairs but though it was relatively busy it didn’t have the atmosphere that the ground floor and its stage had.

Back downstairs Caroline got us as close to the stage as possible so we could check out Signature (from Britain’s Got Talent) doing their MJ impersonation.

I couldn’t believe how pushy people were being just to get a view of the stage! It was crazy. We stayed out on the dancefloor for a few hours (and my feet are still killing this morning by the way! )The music wasn’t too bad playing a mix of older cheesy tunes and current top 50 hits. Unfortunately the DJ seemed to repeat a few particularly anthemy type songs which was the only annoying aspect. The rest of the time he did a pretty good job on their remixes.

One minor drawback to going out on Halloween though … you just don’t know what’s lurking under all those costumes – hard to tell if someone is hot or not! 😉

Great night out!h

Nate and Caro Wed

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Good friends Nate and Caro, though already legally married a month ago, had their official ceremony in France this past weekend.

And it was perfect!

Friday saw me eurostarring it into Paris after work and catching a lift up to Chateaureux with Caro’s lovely cousins. After a late dinner before leaving Paris arriving in Chateaureux it was straight to bed (it was nearly 1am by then after all!) after saying a quick hello to Nate and Caro who had made their way to Chateaureux the week before. Saturday was going to bring an early morning start for the lot of us in order to get ready for the wedding. Mainly it was us girls as a few of us girls were getting our hair done at one of the local hairdresses.

Saturday

Actually I thought we were all in for a simple wash and blow-dry but it turns out we were in for something much more elaborate. The hairdressers are apparently “designers” so what they do with your hair could be anything – no style is ever the same. I initially did try and ask for a book to pick a hairstyle but after seeing what happened when Julia, Nate’s sister, attempted this I realised trying guide these French hairdressers into a style was just not going to work. Julia was really not impressed with her hair but managed to rectify it for the wedding. In the end I just left the “designers” to be. Thankfully, the result wasn’t so bad! In fact, Caro’s hair especially was fantastic!

Julia unhappy with hair but still smiling

After getting our hair done and before the wedding ceremony Caro’s family cooked up some ratatouille and barbeque for lunch. This was delicious and very welcome as we hadn’t had any breakfast by then and we were all starving!

It was then on to the Church for the ceremony. Nate and Caro couldn’t have asked for a more beautiful day for the ceremony. Clear blue skies and a present and warm sun. This bodes very well for their marriage I think! 🙂 The ceremony was conducted mainly in French though the priest did now and then speak some English. Caro also had a few of us do some readings for her which was a nice thought – her sister, Aurelie, and cousin, Emma, did the French passages and Julia and I did the English. I was terribly nervous about doing the reading but mostly about tripping when going back to my seat. Thankfully all went smoothly. The ceremony was just the right length and before I knew it we were signing our names as witnesses and we were done!

After photos it was back to Caro’s house for some afternoon snacks and champagne. As most people know I’m a little (okay quite a lot) allergic to alcohol and even just after a small half glass of the stuff I was a little tipsy. I couldn’t not celebrate after all. 🙂 It was a nice relaxing afternoon in the garden before the big event at Les Dryades for the reception.

The reception was beautiful. Caro had planned for a red and black theme that was represented right down even to the little lady bugs scattered about on the tables and the bars. Dinner at the reception was an 8 course extravaganza starting with an interesting opening piece called Patience – which was delicious though I’m still not exactly sure what was in the shot of soup. We also had quail, foie gras, sweetbread and the BEST dish – the scallops. It was gorgeous – I would have done anything to get my hands and anyone who didn’t finish eating theirs! LOL. These savoury dishes were followed by ice cream and berries, assorted cheeses and little cakes. Finally all this was followed by the traditional French Wedding cake croquembouch – in essence profiteroles piled up in a pyramid bound up by caramel string. Very sweet!

Then Nate and Caro had something I’ve not seen at any wedding I’ve been to – FIREWORKS! It was great – it was extra special for Caro I think due to the story behind the fireworks which, actually, is little too sad to go into here.

After Nate gave his speech – which was truly moving and very romantic (quoting a passage from Keats) the night took an interesting turn with Caro’s brother surprising her with three special ways to remember her wedding 1. a giant picture that he’d painted of her and Nate 2. a leave your hand print memory painting of all the guests and 3. another way to remember the guests – little easels that he got us to draw on. All very creative ideas!

Sunday

The celebrations from the reception lasted way into the early hours of Sunday morning. We then all got up for a Sunday brunch which gave the other guests who couldn’t make Saturday’s festivities a chance to share in Nate and Caro’s special weekend. It was a much more relaxed affair .. and afterwards a few of us even managed to sneak away for a little golf on the driving range!

The weekend has been a lot of fun. I’ve met a lot of people and even though the French/English barrier was a bit tricky at times I was pleased to see that everyone I met was super-friendly. It was nice to be a part of Nate and Caro’s day. Great to see their amazing love. Check this link out for more photos.

The Boy is All Grown Up – Part II

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Part II of Akhlaq’s and Batool’s Wedding Party got going today at Watford. This time the reception was for Akhlaq’s side of the family. The venue, at the Ramada, was much more intimate than the first venue so this reception seemed a bit closer to what I know as a wedding including having a head table where Akhlaq and Batool actually got to sit down and enjoy the meal.

Having a smaller wedding reception, however, didn’t change how tardy people were in arriving. Akhlaq and Batool entered about an hour and half after we arrived although I think they had arrived a bit earlier and were just waiting for the majority of the guests to arrive. At least this time, too, Akhlaq and Batool, got to arrive together which was very sweet.

Having a smaller wedding reception also didn’t reduce the number of people taking photos of Ahklaq and Batool cutting the cake. I got some really nice photos of the two of them though this time feeding each other. Cute!

Oh! also Akhlaq had this giant chocolate fountain for all the guests to indulge in. I swear it was nearly taller than I was!

Today’s reception seemed a little less formal than the one on Thursday. Once Akhlaq and Batool arrived one of Akhlaq’s best mates gave a speech which was actually very serious for most of it until he cracked a joke about mothers-in-laws. After that we very quickly got served a meal which seemed to go down very quickly. Unlike Thursday night the platters weren’t as big and as we had nearly double the number of people at our table the food went very quickly. Our waiter, unfortunately, was not very efficient! Still I think everyone ate way more than they could handle and enjoyed what we received.

After food it was the cake cutting as mentioned previously, then tea and coffee and the chocolate fountain. After this was also photos with Akhlaq and Batool. Worked out nicely this time and we managed to get one big group shot of all of us from work. More photos here.

Tomorrow the Boy and his wife jet off to Dubai for their honeymoon. Well jealous!!

The Boy is All Grown Up

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It looks like 2008 is the year of the wedding. This morning Akhlaq got wedded to Batool and this evening they had their first reception – it is actually the reception for the bride’s side. I’ve never heard of two wedding receptions but I guess its traditional. Plus from what I could gather from what Akhlaq said they had no shortage of guests to invite … not that Akhlaq or Batool knew many of the guests!

Although I have asked Akhlaq a few things about Muslim weddings James and I still weren’t too sure what was going to happen tonight. The invite said that guests were to arrive at 6.30, speeches at 7.00 and food served at 7.30. Well, not unexpectedly I guess, we were one of the very first to arrive and guests didn’t finish arriving until after 7.30! Arriving early allowed us to get a feel for the room however. Located at The Centre in Slough (a conference centre) and with Akhlaq and Batool expecting up to 800 guests this was definitely one of the bigger wedding receptions I’ve been to. Interestingly men cannot sit in front of women and so with the L-shaped room the men were at the back and the women off to the side. This made for an interesting array of colours with the black of the suits of the men contrasting sharply with the colourful saris of the women.

At about 8pm Akhlaq walked in with a rather large entourage. It was kind of cool actually. He walked in greeting a few people and then went and sat up on stage with his I guess what would be considered his grooms men. About 20 minutes later Batool then walked in surrounded by her entourage to join Akhlaq on stage. It was all rather theatrical!

After that it was a lot of speeches and then at 9pm they started bringing out the food – big time! There were these giant platters of food and we could barely work through half of the platter before it was taken away to be refilled again. As we didn’t now what food was to come we didnt know how to pace ourselves … as a result I ended up seriously over eating.

After dessert there was a bit of time for going up to the stage and sitting with Akhlaq and Batool. It was strange that not many people were going up to talk to them – or mainly it was the same people going up. I don’t think that Akhlaq and Batool actually got a chance to eat which was a shame as there was a LOT of food.

Finally it was cake cutting time. Boy was this a crazy time – I somehow snuck up quite quickly next to the official photographer to take pictures and the next second I turn around and I’m literally surrounded by at least 50 people and their cameras. Bizarre! Because it was so busy and we had to go catch our train James and I didn’t end up getting any of the cake 🙁

So, its now official – the Boy is married! And he couldn’t be married to a nicer woman. In Batool he seems to have the perfect balance to his personality. Definitely great to be here for this part of Akhlaq’s life. Its also really nice to see him so over the moon and happy and confident.

More photos here.

Congrats to Nate and Caro!!

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I’m in Greece at the moment and thanks to the world wide web I was able to watch good friends Nate and Caro marry at their civil ceremony back in London. Congrats to the two of them!!! Looking forward to their official ceremony in France in a month’s time.

Wimbledon 2008

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So I’ve done the half day queuing for tickets at Wimbledon and I’ve done the entry via ballot tickets thanks to Akhlaq, twice, and now I can say that I’ve done the overnight thing for tickets.

Jules floated the idea of the doing the overnight thing not too long ago and I thought finally someone who is willing to go! Sandra was up for it too though I don’t think she actually knew very much about tennis at all.

I wasn’t sure what to expect at all from the experience. I just knew that I was in for a night of sleeplessness!

Due to our schedules we decided early on to go for a Friday, Day 5 of the Championship. This also allowed us to then have the weekend to recover from the experience. Day 5 was the 3rd round matches so this meant the possibility of higher quality matches … but with the higher quality matches came higher ticket prices! (I think this actually had some impact on the number of people in the queue too.)

Preparing to overnight it at Wimbledon was almost a military operation ensuring we had sufficient supplies of food and drink, a tent to sleep in (thanks Sandra), sleeping bags etc. We even went so far as to bring a disposable barbecue though it later turned out, despite what it said on the website, that we weren’t allowed to use it. So we left work to meet at Southfields for about 3.30pm. Walking down to the Common, where apparently the queue was being hosted for the first time, we were surprised to see a long long queue but only small number of tents. Turns out the long long queue was for entry into Wimbledon that day! A man directed us to a corner of the Common where we very quickly, when I say we I mean Sandra – heh heh, put up the tent. It was a bit strange however with all these people from the queue watching us. By 4.30 we were done. And then the waiting began.

Once the tents were up I was very amused to see that we still got junk mail! People came around with leaflets for Pizza, Chinese etc. This came in handy for later on.

To ensure that people queued in an orderly fashion queue cards were given out early (starting at about 5pm.) These queue cards needed to be handed in the following morning in exchange for wrist-bands which in turn needed to be handed in for an actual ticket but more on that later. This procedure stopped queue jumpers but also gave us the freedom to move about … most importantly to pick up our Chinese delivery and go to the toilet! We ended up being numbers 79, 80 and 81 in the queue which to me was very impressive. I later realised that every day they give out 500 Centre Court, 500 Court 1 and 500 court 2 tickets so I think its fair to say we were safely in.

By about 6pm we started to get a little peckish. Unfortunately, as I’ve already mentioned, fires of any sort were not allowed including our disposable barbecue but fortunately, as I’ve also already mentioned, we had junk mail so we had our pick of delivery options. Of course we went for Chinese and boy did it go down quickly once it was delivered! Did I mention it was also Sandra’s birthday today? As a treat we had a beautiful Thornton’s chocolate cake for dessert. It was delish … even for someone like me who’s not a fan of chocolate cake! It was very rich and very filling however and for about 4 hours after that I was definitely feeling it.

At about 8pm we had retired to inside the tent. It was a lot more comfortable to lie in there with our super full stomachs than sit outside on the grass (next time I’ll be sure to bring some porta-chairs.) We also had a surprise visitor. Not sure how the cat found us but he was well cute. Strangely, overnight, inside the tent it never really got dark so as a result of this, and as a result of our neighbours talking (very loudly) until very early the next morning, I barely got any sleep. So, by about 4am I think I was awake and ready to tackle the day at Wimbledon.

Before we’d retired for the night there weren’t very many tents up – I’d say about 100 at a maximum but by the time we got up to get ready for the day it had doubled overnight (including some people just in sleeping bags braving the rain without cover – crazy people!) plus more people had joined the queue as walk-ins. They must have started arriving around the time I awoke – as there was quite a buzz by that time. We were very lucky with the rain actually – it held off until we were in the tent and stopped by the time we stepped out in the morning.

By about 6.00am we had to pack up our tents and leave items in left luggage to join the queue proper. After this it was pretty much another few hours of queuing, broken up by HSBC offering us free strawberries (yummy), Evian free water bottles and also getting faces/arms painted with country flags. The queuing wasn’t so from the fact that there were people in front of us (we were pretty much at the front of the queue after all) but more the fact that we were waiting for Wimbledon to open for the day.

As I said you swap your queue cards for a wristband which is later used to get your ticket. Get to the front of the queue and you have an option for Centre Court, Court 1, Court 2 or Grounds Pass tickets. It was amusing to see that a few people had clearly been staying overnight at Wimbledon for the whole week if the number of wristbands on their wrists were any indication – talk about dedicated. Strangely a lot of people around us opted merely for Grounds Passes which seemed a waste of the time spent overnight. They could have got the same ticket joining the queue at 9am in the morning!

By 9am we were in. Like Disneyland and Disneyworld Wimbledon operates a line drop situation. They let you in to a certain point, including of course the Wimbledon shop, and then there are chain barriers to stop you getting further. By 10.30 they drop the chains and then it’s a rush to get seating on the outside courts (all unreserved.) As it turned out tennis wasn’t scheduled to start until noon on the outside courts but play didn’t end up starting until much later. We had some seats on Court 18 and I was hoping to catch Aussie Casey Dellacqua play a few games of her third round match but for some reason there was a delay in the start so we gave up and decided to grab some lunch instead before taking our Court 1 seats.

We ended up going for Court 1 tickets over Centre Court due to the line up of:

– Lleyton Hewitt (AUS) v Simone Bolelli (ITA)
– Jie Zheng (CHN) v Ana Ivanovic (SRB)
– Marat Safin (RUS) v Andreas Seppi (ITA)

Centre Court had a few stars on it too (including Roger Federer, Serena Williams, Amelie Mauresmo, Mario Ancic and David Ferrer) but I really wanted to see Lleyton and also the new women’s world number one, and potential new pin-up girl, Ana Ivanovic play.

Rain was a bit of an enemy today but not as much as last year (when we only got to see a couple of hours tennis the entire 9 hour day.) It delayed the start of the tennis on Court 1 for about an hour and a half and then tennis was on and off a bit for the rest of the day. So, we saw two completed matches with Lleyton triumphing over his opponent (I was very pleased about that. I was also pleased to see his wife Bec Hewitt in the stands) but sadly for the women’s number one, Ana Ivanovic, it was not a good day. She was soundly beaten by her smaller opponent Jie Zheng who really stepped up to the plate and took it to Ana. It seemed Ana had no answers to the little power-house who fully deserved to win the match. It was nice to see, however, that Ana was still a good sport at the end waiting to walk off together with her opponent at match end.

Finally we also saw Marat Safin start his match against Italian Andreas Seppi. Marat has been a kind of dark horse this tournament. The former world number one has been plagued with injuries, recent poor form and has a dislike of the grass so he was not expected to threaten this tournament. However his play today against the higher seeded (29th) opponent shows that he has plenty of tricks up his sleeve that could take him nearly all the way.

We didn’t stay to the end of Wimbledon as we were all quite tired and didn’t feel up to dealing with the crowds but I think I could say that this overnight experience was a success. We got the tickets we wanted, had a great time camping and also we got to see some awesome tennis. I can’t wait until next year … having said that I’ll still be entering the ballot come December!

Taste of London

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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.