Taste of London - get your tickets soon!

Around this time of year every year, my stomach is rumbling constantly - regardless of how much food I have in it - all in anticipation of one event where I pretty much stuff my face for an entire day with a variety of different food: Taste of London.

I first read about it in Tatler in 2005. They basically described it as 30 of London's best restaurants in Somerset House for a day and they gave a code you could use to upgrade your ticket to VIP so you could also get a glass of champagne on arrival. They had me at hello!

Upon arrival we were given our champagne and crowns - no, not the royal kind, but the 'event currency' kind! How it works is this - with each of the tickets we purchased we were given a book of 40 crowns which we could use to get food from each of the stalls that the restaurants set up. Each of the restaurants charged a different amount of crowns for their meals, depending on ingredients and portion sizes, but each was around 4-8 crowns.

It's all a bit of a blur now but I can recall eating food from pretty much every continent and meat of all kinds. No-one worried about the food 'complimenting' each other. Very generous wine sellers were handing out samples of their wares and everyone was lapping it up. All in all it was a fantastic, hedonistic day in such beautiful surroundings.

Since then, I have only missed one year - it did take wild horses for that to happen.

Of course, over the years small things have changed. Due to the popularity of the event more space was required and the venue was changed to Regent's Park. The number of restaurants has increased to around 40. The wine sellers are not quite so generous with their wares. The average dish is now around 9 crowns. Small changes, some good, some bad.

However, the important stuff is still the same - lots of good food, a huge variety, so many people with the same enthusiasm for food, and lots of free nibbles. What more could we ask for?

Words can only convey so much, so here are a few pics from last year / the year before:

A chef from Nipa Thai, Lancaster Hotel prepares a soft-shell crab salad for the hungry mob


Haggis!


Some of the delights on offer:
Roast Aberdeen angus beef fillet with tarragon mousse,
and rhubarb & custard ice-cream crumble


Fruit Carvings


A variety of English sausages

Come rain or shine, we will still stuff our faces!

Don't forget to get your tickets soon - this year the dates are 17th - 20th June. For anyone reading this who is not in London - do not despair! Other places where they run this event include: Auckland, Amsterdam, Birmingham, Cape Town, Dubai, Dublin, Edinburgh, Jo'burg, Melbourne and Sydney.

*rumble*


Happy eating,

Kitsune