Emma McAlpine gets a sneak preview of three new dishes at this year's Taste of London Festival.
We've got just over three weeks to go until the Taste of London Festival and my mouth is watering already. 40 of the capital's top restaurants are taking over Regent's Park from June 16th-19th, bringing a total of 11 Michelin stars with them.
Along with several other journalists, I've been invited on a mini 'safari' tour of three of the newest Soho-based additions, Quo Vadis, Gauthier Soho, Bocca di Lupo and its ice cream offshoot, Gelupo. We are to be given one course from each of their festival menus, while Taste of London's wine expert Neil Philips talks us through the wines and waters (yes waters!) he's matched for each one.
We start off in Quo Vadis and kick off with a puerto fino sherry aperitif. Fresh and delicate, it's perfect for sherry newbies like me and is less punchy than say, an oloroso or amontillado. Co-owner Sam Hart then introduces us to our first course of the evening, a whopping great rib of beef with triple cooked chips. This is my kind of starter. Hart tells us that he uses grass-fed Longhorn beef, reared in Rutland and hung for 56 days for maximum flavour. "I prefer grass-fed beef to the American-favoured corn-fed beef. You can cut through it like butter but it tends to have no flavour" (I couldn't agree more, I ordered a USDA corn-fed Angus rib-eye steak from Goodman's the other day and it was completely tasteless). Neil Philips explains the wine he’s chosen for the dish, a 2005 Spanish Chivite from Navarre, the next door (but cheaper) region to Rioja. Smooth and subtle, it's perfect for the charcoaled beef and I could drink gallons of the stuff. Thankfully, it's time to move on.
Next up is one of my favourite restaurants, the Michelin-starred Gauthier Soho. Here we get to try their signature dish, the black truffle risotto with a chicken jus reduction and brown butter. Oozy, earthy goodness with thin shavings of truffle that melt in the mouth, if you taste one dish at the festival, this wouldn't be a bad call. We accompany it with a bottle of 2010 Masi Masianco, a lovely creamy Pinot Grigio. I’m afraid I couldn't possibly comment on any of the waters we taste, my palate is clearly not as finely-tuned as Philips'!
Last, but by no means least, is Gelupo, Bocca di Lupo's neighbouring ice cream joint. Head Chef Jacob Kennedy hands us a gelato cup with three scoops of coconut, yoghurt, ricotta and sour cherry ripple. More milky than creamy, all are delicious, but the coconut is the winner for me. We wash the gelati down with a cucumber, Hendricks and rose granita cocktail whipped up across the road by one of Bocca di Lupo's expert bartenders. A beautifully refreshing end to our restaurant crawl, I feel patriotic just drinking it.
Before we leave, chocolatier Paul A Young pops in to give us a summer pudding chocolate he's created exclusively for Taste: an enormous white truffle, Crème de Cassis and berry mixture. Young is a big fan of white and milk chocolate and finds it frustrating when they're written off as the poor relations to dark. I am reminded of a tricky time trying to introduce my father, a Burgundy purist, to the merits of New Zealand Pinot Noir. It was tough at first but he came round when he sampled the goods.
The perfect appetite whetter for the Festival, I would heartily recommend any of the courses we’ve tried this evening. With over a hundred dishes to be sampled, created by some of the world’s greatest chefs, it’s going to be tough deciding what to spend your crowns on, but luckily there is help at hand. A panel of respected critics will be judging all of the dishes before the festival and awarding prizes for the top three. The results will then be announced on the Taste website ahead of the festival.
For more information and to buy tickets visit: www.tastefestivals.com/london
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