Category: UK

The Wine Show and Masterchef Live 2010

Made good use of a friends free ticket to  The Wine Show and Master Chef Live, bumped into several people I knew, which was nice. Surprisingly sociable for such a huge event.

I spent the bulk of my time at The Wine Show, as the Master Chef Live stands on the whole were very busy.

The event was not restricted to  just wine, as delicatessens such as Gastronomic were there, along with  chocolatiers such as Chocolate and Love.  There was also the rather amusing Mad Cow Fudge company, selling fudge “Made by cows from Yorkshire who like their Huddersfield”. Their Christmas Pudding fudge is a real winner.

On the wine front we tried several very good wines.  Wines of Chile for example had successfully matched their wines with some delicious Benares curries.  I also had an interesting chat with Mark Hellyar of Chateau Civrac on popularising wines from the Bordeaux region, and sampled a couple of  their  full bodied wines.  Chateau Civrac supply wines to several restaurants including Benares. I then moved on to the next stand Cantina Cirotto to try their rather lovely Prosecco. We also had a short presentation on what makes a good dessert wine from Tastour and enjoyed a nice glass of German Eiswein.

The highlight however had to be the Coutts Private Cellar, where Tim Atkin gave his presentation and several high end wine merchants provided samples of their wares. My personal favorite was the Cascina Bongiovanni Barola Pernanne 2004 from Colasanti (£71.50 RPR) . The  food plates from British Fine Foods were a perfect accompaniment – I know where I am ordering my Christmas goodies from.

 

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Happy Halloween from No Expert

The City Inn has some prize winning pumpkins on display this year, see below:-

First place goes to the Witch
Second place goes to the Clown
The Grim Reaper had my vote

Just as good in daylight I think.

 

 

 

 

UPDATE : November 2010 – The City Inn has been rebranded and is now the Mint Hotel.

UPDATE: January 2011 – The Mint Hotel is now a Doubletree Hilton Hotel.

Gone for a Burton – Blot on the Landscape! (Closed)

We had a quite a  few comments on our posts covering Harveys in Ramsgate, the consensus being that this celebrity chef inspired outpost was really, really bad.

See:-

However unlike the Foliage and Parc des Eaux Vives which also closed this year. Harveys closure was deserved. We can only hope that this prime spot on the harbour does not stay closed for too long.

We have also been cheeky using the tag line “Gone for a Burton” – a play on the celebrity chef John Burton Race’s name.  Isle One got in first with that one, but since they seem to have used one of our photographs without crediting us (tut….tut) it seemed only fair that we copy their tag line.

UPDATE – November 2010

Jacks Cantina on the Marina

Harveys has now been replaced by Jacks (The Cantina on the Marina) . I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. Why the council gave the go ahead to deface this building situated in a prime location on a Victorian Harbour is beyond me.  This really is in bad taste and we haven’t even tried the food yet!

UPDATE May 2011 – The “Orange Blot” that was Jacks is gone, the building now has a new more suitable paint job. Wonder who will move into this prime spot next?  It would be a great location for Eddie Gilberts if they were thinking of expanding.

 

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Chocolate Unwrapped at Vinopolis

It’s a change of venue for the Chocolate Unwrapped show this year.  Last year it was at the Mayfair Hotel, this year it moved to the rather more interesting Vinopolis.  The new venue though did not work as well for the lectures. Paul A Young‘s talks  for example were averaging about 90 attendees instead of the expected 30.  Fortunately he warned us about the over attendance and we got in early enough to get front row seats. His talk was suitably entertaining,  I was especially amused by the story that his mother still buys him Quality Street for Christmas.

The Chocolate Art work was fun, especially the gorilla. Thorntons Eiffel Tower was hideous though.

There were lots of new stands this year.  Matcha Chocolat with their tea and chocolate combinations were especially interesting.  All the chocolates and the brownie we had from Paul A Young were really good, I even found his new Marmite chocolate unoffensive. I loved William Curley’s Cinnamon Milk Chocolate.

There were some novelties too.  Like Chocri, who let you play chocolatier, choosing toppings and having your name on the bar and the Lebanese company Patchi, who seemed to focus on very ornate packaging for special occasions like weddings, baby showers and embassy do’s – kinda OTT Ferrier Roche!.  Thorntons were there too this year, showing yet again just how big a gap there is between the mass market chocolatiers and the artisan chocolatiers.

This event is definately in the diary again for next year.

 

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Almeida – Chocolate Week 2010

I have been looking forward to returning to Almeida for Chocolate week, based mainly on my experience last year.  I have had drinks, lunch and several dinners at Almeida since then.  I do rate this place as a good choice  for eating or drinking at any time of the year, however it does seem to manage to raise its game during Chocolate week.

Head Chef, Alan Jones has teamed up again this year with chocolatier Paul A Young, to create the Chocolate Menu.

We started with Chocolate Martini’s (not on the drinks menu, so made to order), a  good start to this themed occasion. The Truffle and Honey Risotto was well received, very rich. The main courses of Halibut and Pork Belly were more subtle, although the Pork Belly recipe last year may have had the edge.  We tried a different Portuguese wine this year (Crasto, Douro, 2005), which worked well with the Chocolate theme, and switched our dessert wine choice on the Sommieliers recommendation to a bottle of Maury, Mas Amiel Vintage, Roussillon, France, 2007. Which I certainly enjoyed with the Ported plums roasted with orange in dark chocolate consomme and Paul A Youngs sea salted caramel.

The service although friendly was flawed,  staff were weak on ingredients in the dishes, and  our coffee arriving before we had finished dessert is a real no no, when you are trying to have a relaxing evening.

So although the meal was good, it did not quite reach the heights of last years.

 

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Chocolate & Cocktail matching at Le Méridien

I thought it was bad planning to have both Cocktail Week and Chocolate Week at the same time, but  it does present the opportunity to match cocktails with specific chocolates.  Chocolate Ecstasy Tours organised such an event in the new cocktail bar (Longitude 0°8′) in Le Méridien Piccadilly.

The matching was a bit hit and miss, but on the whole good fun and an excellent concept.  We had a total of 7 cocktails and lots of canapes, which made this a very good deal. There was also the goodie bag with  a selection of chocolate samples from Melt, Chocolate and Love and Paul A Young (who was among the Chocolatiers in attendance).

Chocablog, who were lucky enough to be involved in “helping out” during the preparation stage for this event, have a great post on it – love the photographs, see :-

 

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