Taste Of London 2015

If you are a food lover, then no doubt Taste of London is firmly in your calendar. The festival runs over three days and gives entrants the chance to sample all that London has to offer when it comes to food. The festival takes place in Hyde Park and here you will find pop-up tents from some of London’s biggest restaurants including Sushi Samba, Duck & Waffle and Marcus Wareing’s Tredwells. Alongside things like Shake Shack and Meatmission and lots of exciting food brands to discover. One of my favourites this time was Portlebay popcorn with their bacon and maple syrup popcorn, which had me coming back for more and more!

I attended Taste of London on Thursday evening. There are two sessions over the three days, the day session which runs from 12pm-4pm and the evening 5.30pm-9.30pm, which I think is a great one to go to after work. It also didn’t seem to end as abruptly as the day one and the party was still sort of going as we left about 9.45pm. We however got there nice and early, with me was Heather who you might remember winning the Godiva Chocolate Challenge last year? After numerous tweets shared over the love of every TV programme known to man we have become friends and can now share our other passion for food. All paths lead to food!

We started off at one of the Prosecco bars and went for a couple of glasses of Prosecco and raspberry. It was a lovely evening so we decided to sit in the sun and plan our visit. The currency at Taste of London is ‘crowns’. You can buy booklets of these and 1 crown = £1. You can also pay with cash for some things but do make sure you pick these up as it’s the main currency.

You would be thinking Taste is all about the food but we seemed to get distracted by a lot of the drinks on offer last night. One in particular I absolutely loved was Pococello, a concept thought up by the guys of Pizza Pilgrims in Soho. After one sip of their limoncello slushie I was in heaven and one shot of limoncello later, I was definitely ready to find some food.

We stopped off at Sushi Samba and I opted for the Kobe burger with truffle, I wasn’t quite expecting it to be so small, pretty much the size of a canape for £9, but that aside it was really lovely and left me wanting more food. We decided to wash this down with frozen margaritas from mexican restaurant Mestizo. With burgers now firmly on the brain we went on the hunt.

There is so much to see at Taste you really don’t know where to look. There are plenty of freebies on offer too, with restaurants and brands willing for you to try their food and drink. There is also the AEG Taste Theatre where you can learn from top chefs and watch the demonstrations.

We got distracted by Mortimer’s Orchard and their amazing Silent Disco and cider, I am not a big cider fan at all and this was absolutely lovely, so do give it a try. These made us even hungrier so Shake Shack it was, the burger was just too good, but just a little smaller than a normal one.

We finished off our evening at the amazing Laurent Perrier pink tent with two glasses of Laurent-Perrier Cuvée Rosé. Ready to call it a night we got asked to join the Laurent-Perrier masterclass, the last one of the day. Of course we couldn’t resist!

The masterclass was held by the David Hesketh the Managing Director of Laurent-Perrier. We got to pair three different champagnes;  Laurent-Perrier Ultra Brut, Laurent-Perrier Cuvée Rosé and Laurent-Perrier Grand Siècle. These were paired with canapes from Bob’s Lobster.  I tried my first ever oyster, given it was a fried one I was probably wimping out but I am glad I tried it. Also a lobster roll and finally the Achi Tuna Taco which when eaten with the Laurent-Perrier Cuvée Rosé really added a whole new flavour to it.

We had a great evening and I think my main tip would be to make sure you buy enough crowns and expect the food to be slightly smaller as it’s more a taster of each place than a fully fledged meal.

Taste of London runs until Sunday 21st June, there are still some tickets available. For tickets visit Taste of London.