There are all sorts of random events being held revolving around food recently. The last one we went to was the Bompas and Parr: The Complete History of Food which was truly interesting. Today it was the inaugural Experimental Food Society Spectacular.

The Experimental Food Society was started at the beginning of this year as a front for showcasing gourmet artists interested in more than just swallowing food. Bombas and Parr are members of this group.

It was crazy crazy busy when we turned up and you could hardly move for all the people inside. If it wasn’t for the fact I was keen to see what kind of genius creations people could come up with I would have bypassed the event altogether. Here are some pics of the things I saw today:

lovetocake’s Gorilla cake

Sharon Baker’s Body and Breast bread casts

Carl Warner working on his Lobster Landscape

Chocolate from Paul Wayne Gregory was just plain gorgeous. They were giving out sample lollipops which I nearly got stampeded over from girls trying to get their grubby mitts on them. This was one part of the event that I really hated – all these pushy people who didn’t care who they were pushing around.

This suckling pig look pretty rested …

Some sugar and butter sculptures

Oh, and look who we came across. Sam Bompas.

And some of their creations (in ethanol) in conjunction with the Robin Collective.

You got to play this ring toss “game” and then you’d get to sample some ethanol jelly … think it was nicer in concept than in taste. Very strong!

You’ve probably seen this guy’s work in an email forward somewhere. Takashi Itoh. Pretty brilliant carvings in watermelon.

Malcolm West’s Paul O’Grady in Jelly Bellies.

And finally, some live art. This dude started painting random people in the audience in chocolate. A brown guy in white chocolate, and a white gal in brown chocolate. Really funny.

PS Don’t you just love the pictures in the background!

We didn’t cough up the £75 for the banquet (which was basically grabbing whatever you could and eating it) afterwards but I’m sure it would have been interesting dining on the food that we’d all been looking at all day. I mean, imagine hacking at Sharon Baker’s Body of Bread. Ha!