Taste of London 2012 - A Sneaky Preview of Some of this Year's Best Dishes & a Competition to **WIN** a Pair of Tickets to the Show

This year, Taste of London is celebrating what is arguably its best restaurant line-up to date, totalling an impressive eleven Michelin stars.  Chefs from over 40 restaurants will be serving special menus of starter sized tasting plates, including signature dishes specially created for the festival to reflect their philosophy and use of seasonal and premium ingredients.

Over 50,000 visitors are expected in London’s Regent’s Park between the 21st and 24th June 2012  attending what is known today as one of the most respected international food and drinks event spanning 12 cities around the world. In London for the first time, the festival will also feature some renowned international chefs including David Chang of Momofuku fame. So if you ever fancied trying David's legendary noodles but never quite made it to New York City, this is your chance, right here in London!

A couple of weeks ago I was invited to a Taste of London food safari to try some of the dishes that will be on offer at the festival. We kicked off at The River Restaurant in the sumptuous Savoy Hotel, where we had a starter of "Slow Cooked Pork Belly, Prawn Carpaccio with Citrus" which was delicious, and beautifully presented. I enjoyed the different layers of textures and colours in this dish. The pork belly was meltingly tender and contrasted well with the seared, crunchy cucumber.

All wines for this food safari were expertly selected by Neil Phillips, The Wine Tipster. Neil is the Wine Ambassador for Taste of London and Taste of Christmas shows, where he will also be organising the Best in Taste Wine Awards for the Regents Park event. In 2012, Neil is once again Master of Ceremonies at the VIP Party, presenting at Taste of London and, for the first time, presenting at Taste of Edinburgh. I have known Neil for a few years now, and have learnt a great deal about wine from his tutored tastings and wine writing, see the link to his website in my "Wine & Drink Sites I Love".

To match The River Restaurant's pork belly dish, Neil chose a 2010 Alsatian Pinot Gris by Henri Martischang (£13  from www.griiffinwell.com). This gold medal winning wine from the often ignored Alsace region had good richness, balance and crisp acidity to match with slow cooked pork belly. Definitely a style of wine for food matching.

We were then taken to our next stop - Maze - for our main course. Maze is Gordon Ramsay’s stylish and relaxed small-plate take on fine dining, allowing diners to sample a wide variety of dishes. I have been to Maze on a couple of occasions and enjoyed immensely my meals there. This time we were seated by the restaurant's enormous kitchen and could marvel at the army of chefs in action which was fun.

The " Braised Beef Featherblade, Smoked Onion Puree, Shimeji Mushrooms and Togarashi" served to us at Maze was excellent with a melt-in-the-mouth and well seasoned beef accompanied by some familiar Asian ingredients such as meaty shimeji mushrooms and togarashi pepper. A stunning dish, I just wished I could have had seconds!

To partner the braised beef, Neil picked an Uruguayan Tannat - a grape varietal originally from the South West of France but which has become Uruguay's most prominent grape. The Tannat Libero 2010, De Lucca, (£12 from www.winesofuruguay.co.uk) was a well structured wine packed with spice (liquorice), dark fruits (plums) and soft tannins and a hint of chocolate.  A great match with well seasoned, braised beef.

Dessert, a lovely " Soft Chocolate Cake with Crema di Mascarpone" was presented to us at Theo Randall at The Intercontinental. I enjoyed this cake, it was indeed soft with an intense and bitterly sweet flavour from good quality chocolate. The presentation in my opinion was a tad lacking - a dusting of icing sugar and/or a couple of berries would have done wonders to the look of this dish.

The dessert wine, a  2009  Muffato della Sala from Umbria, Italy was beautifully balanced with intense flavours of barley sugar and honey and with delicate acidity. Made from Sauvignon Blanc, Traminer and Riesling, it was an excellent match to Theo's rich chocolate cake.

If my experience at this food safari is anything to go by, I would thoroughly recommend visiting Taste of London this year, and trying all the dishes I have experienced. You can learn more about Taste of London as well buy tickets for this event by visiting the website here. 

Alternatively, for a chance to WIN a pair of tickets to Taste of London and a bottle of premium Kentucky Bourbon, kindly sponsored by the good people of Maker's Mark, please try your luck by entering the competition below.

HOW TO ENTER THIS COMPETITION

To enter the Maker's Mark Competition for a pair of tickets for Friday, 22nd June 2012, for Taste of London and a bottle of Maker's Mark, simply leave a comment in this post stating your NAME and E-MAIL address as MrBloggs(at)gmail(dot)com by midday on Wednesday, the 20th June 2012. The lucky winner will be randomly selected using random.org and his/her name will be announced via Twitter (follow @thelondonfoodie) at 1pm on that same day. 

To increase your chances of winning (every tweet/retweet will count as an additional entry - up to 3 tweets per follower), follow and tweet me on @thelondonfoodie for @makersmark and @tasteoflondon competition by midday on Wednesday.

If you do not use Twitter, I will also be publishing the winner's name here on Thursday, the 21st June 2012.


The winner of this competition, randomly selected by random.org, was Kirsty W (@wooki481) - Kirsty won via her 2nd Twitter entry (doubled her chances of winning). Thank you Kirsty for your tweet and for entering this competition. Makers Mark will be contacting you to arrange delivery of your tickets and your bottle of Maker's Mark.

PLEASE NOTE - you must be over 18 years old to enter this competition.