A food festival ... in the UK?

About three weeks before my break came due, I got an email from Trudy asking if I would be in London on the weekend of the 23rd and 24th of June because the 'Taste of London' festival was going to be on and she was pretty sure I'd be a likely contender for that ... alas NO! I would not be out of Mali until the 27th - bugger!

However, when I checked the website she sent me, I discovered that that festival was travelling around the UK, and I would have a chance to catch it, in its last week, perhaps. And the awesomely lovely Trudles surprised me with a visit to the 'Taste of Bath' on the Sunday, which she had asked me to keep free, and even the dark ominous rain clouds couldn't keep my excitement contained.

We arrived in a drizzly mist (which I secretly hoped would keep the punters away) and queued for time enough to read through the program and start planning our dégustation for the day, a daunting task given that we had 45 dishes to choose from! I figured that amongst the three of us we would be able to taste just about everything.

So we wandered in and started with a little taste of Gloucester old spot belly pork with caramelised apples and mustard mash - hmmmm, simply delish - the first of at least 5 pork belly dishes on the restaurant menus. And then, we got seriously started ...


An array of taste sensations

... I tried the haloumi and quinoa summer salad (my first taste of borage flowers - interesting), Trude hooked into panfried scallops with Thai puree (?) and lemongrass foam, and a raspberry mousse and jelly combo, and Art tried the Balinese black rice pudding.


Beijing duck roll

I decided to try the Beijing duck rice paper roll as I am typically such a fan, but I'm afraid that I have to report that this was the most uninspiring and flavourless offering I had all day. So instead Trude and I moved up the line for some Devon lamb saddle with herb and garlic puree and tapenade jus.


Lovely lamb

And this dish made everyone truly happy. I really didn't want to be so happy though, because loving lamb is such an Aussie-girl cliché, I thought I was so much more international and sophisticated - clearly I am wrong.

How hot are the Brits on their purees, by the way?

From that point forward we decided that it might be wise to stick with dishes that are in the traditional British food lexicon ...


Beef Wellington with foie gras

... and tasted the most divine beef Wellington, drizzled with a madeira jus. (How do I spell that warm little giggle of satisfaction?)

Not to mention the desserts - starting with,


Gooseberry shortcake with elderflower parfait

- which was very delicately flavoured (perhaps too delicate really). We moved on to a layered dessert of peach marscapone, raspberry blancmange, vanilla foam (the molecular cooks are at it again) sprinkled with crackling crystals (just sugar crystals, as it turned out).


New-wave trifle

All of which sounded pretty good, but was disappointingly dull. So it was back to the prince of berries for a second, third and fourth go! Yessir, when the raspberries are in season it's hard to eat anything else.


Hmmm, the ultimate berry

Oddly enough however, as sensational and luscious as the raspberry dish was, it was totally surpassed by ...


The dish of the day!

... vindaloo ice-cream (!) with mangoes and mint in a pappadum cone! Outstanding! (Another weird ice-cream combo, much better than the salt-flavoured ice-cream in Japan and equally as interesting, but more morish than the blue cheese ice-cream in Barcelona).

In the end, we voted that the three dishes presented by the vindaloo ice-cream makers (chef Christopher Wicks from Bells Diner, Bristol) - which also included an oyster shooter in strawberry gaspacho with serrano ham dust, and slow cooked pork with truffle and macaroni cheese - were the best all around. Definitely the pick of pork dishes.

As Bath turned on some traditional English summer weather for us, Trude and Art and I settled in for some light entertainment and Pimms, and declared the day a roaring success (and the rain did keep the crowds small, ensuring that the queues for feasting were short, and keeping me NICE!)


Ali, Art and Trudy