Next month, jellymongers and lovely foodie people Bompas and Parr open up a house in Belgrave Square and take people through a history of food. It sounds like a real adventure and if it’s anything like the walk-through gin and tonic B&P did last summer it’ll be a hoot. From their website:

Courvoisier and Bompas & Parr present the Complete History of Food – an exciting walk-through dining experience and multi-course meal charting key revolutionary periods in food history. Travel through time eating and drinking food from London’s top restaurants. The deeper you go in the building the further back in time you go.

It’s a bit like Heston’s Feast but on a grander scale and open to everyone. Food eras covered include Medieval, Renaissance, Victorian and the contemporary scene with a number of global firsts thrown into the mix. Think flooded dining rooms, giant sugar sculptures, Iguanodon dinners and food that responds to your brain waves.

A meal and four cocktails are included in the ticket price. Bounty!

Tickets are selling out quickly and I have mine booked already. I am so very excited about this. Expect lots of photos once I’ve been.

We opted for the 3 course lunch menu, which at £25 was amazingly good value for money, especially as we were given lots of little extras. This is the first of the three amuse-bouches we received. It’s Crostini de romesco and gordal olives, almonds and Jerez (all the dish names come from Tour de Table – I was a bit too squiffy at the end to remember to ask for a course sheet). It was beautiful and delicate and a perfect start to the meal.

Our second amuse-bouche was this little glass of soy milk and smoky aubergine:

Our excellent refined foodie pallets likened this to that of the jelly from a pork pie. Tastier that it sounds.

This is the bread and butter. It was beautiful. The bread was light and fluffy and the butter was out of this world. It had purple powder on it. Awesome.

I didn’t take pictures of everything, I was too busy eating the stuff, but here are a couple of other courses:

Textures of beetroot and crab, green apple and whipped goats curd. The beetroot jelly was particularly good.

Lemon Sole, brioche, yeast and cauliflower.What was lovely about this dish is that the sous chef (I think) came out and poured on the sauce onto our plates.

Pudding was lovely. We mentioned to the waiters that this was my birthday lunch and so I was given this:

Which quite frankly was the cherry on the top of a very large and beautiful cake.

Everyone in Viajante were lovely and helpful and so, so friendly – as we were leaving head chef Nuno Mendes came out of the kitchen, bid us all goodbye, shook my hand and wished me a happy birthday (which was the cherry on top of the cherry on top of the cake). The food was excellent and we cannot wait to go back in an evening and try the 12 course meal.

]]> http://worldofmildew.com/2010/06/viajante/feed/ 0 http://worldofmildew.com/2010/04/short-lease/ http://worldofmildew.com/2010/04/short-lease/#comments Wed, 21 Apr 2010 13:40:40 +0000 Mildew http://worldofmildew.com/?p=328 Our friend Jen was one of the writer/directors who received funding of six short films from the North London Film Fund.  Her film Short Lease is a thrilling horror filmed locally at Forty Hall and is all light and shadow and high suspense. Here’s the trailer:

The Brunswick Centre, in Bloomsbury, is an odd place. Built of white concrete, flats look down onto a square full of shops and bars. It reminds me of a utopian place seen in sci-fi programmes in the 60s. Here’s a picture looking up beneath the flats.

Not enough snow to keep me from work, but it’s lovely to see a bit of it. Makes Enfield feel like Narnia.

I shall be there selling cakes along with a couple of friends where we are collectivity called the Pop Tarts (although I’m currently campaigning for a name change to The Arse Biscuits). We’ve been doing pretty well these past couple of weeks and I have to say that the quality of our food is most excellent. We are awesome. I’ve been providing a number of cakes, two of which are shown below. Red velvet with a green butter-cream icing and a mini Christmas cake.

They’re quite tasty! I’ll also try and post Vinnie’s amazing chili and chocolate brownie and Sarah’s lavender and lemon cake recipes if and when I get them too.

In the evening I met up with Dave, my sister Ju (formally known as Carrot Fly) and sometime commenter on this blog, Jen, had a few pints in the best pub in the world ever and then watch the old Hammer production of Dracula, which was awesome.

Oh, and I came up with this *amazing* joke. What do vegetarian zombies eat?

GRRRAAAAIIIIIINNNSSSS…..

(belated) Happy Samhain!

I’m learning to sew with the aid of Dave’s mum and a very old sewing machine. There’s a definite knack I’m having to learn. It’s going ok though, at least I can guide the material through the machine straightly. Next stop, getting my head round patterns. I made a mini tote bag with some scraps of fabric that happens to be perfect for holding bags of money around…

… the bags of money were pound coins saved up by Dave in a little goldfish money box (named Archie in tribute to our first pet fish) which were carried by me in my new mini tote to the bank so I could go to Amazon and buy this beauty.  A proper camera! To take proper photos! Hooray! Look at what I’ve done:

These was taken on Sunday on a very nice day trip with my sister Becky and her friend Tess (who went off to see Prince later on that day, the lucky buggers)

Canary Warf and the upstairs neighbour’s little kitten Fred, who is the cutist, most curious little cat ever. He’s absolutely gorgeous and every time he wonders into our flat there’s always a little voice in my head suggesting we keep him.

My trip to Oz is now complety booked with my last week spent in a hostel run by a bunch of hippies. Awesome. I have now spent the past half an hour looking at pictures of Australian spiders and literally putting myself off my lunch. Humph.