Category: Food Festivals/Events

Bridges in Ubud

A restaurant recommendation from Bali

Decades ago I visited Ubud in Bali and was captivated by its beauty. My friend Julie made a more recent visit and fell in love with the area and the people, to the extent that she moved there permanently putting down some real roots. Julie is the co-author of A Taste of Bali and if you want to read more about her life in Ubud see Julie in Bali where she covers everything from the perils of house building to earthquakes and the not so gentle pitter-patter of monkeys on the roof.

Ubud has grown and evolved a fair bit since my visit.  One of the changes is a relatively new Restaurant I had heard good things about, so I asked Julie if she knew it.  The restaurant is called Bridges, it opened less than a year ago and was recently voted the number one restaurant in Ubud by Trip Advisor.  It’s a casual fine dining restaurant  with Western and Asian influences, their new menu for example includes Three Spiced Carmelised Duck –  Sliced crispy duck coated in a thin star anise, orange and cinnamon caramel and the Crispy Skinned Pan-fried local Barramundi on a golden caper-dill rosti. Served with sautéed zucchini ribbons and a lime-saffron cream sauce.

A View of Bridges Restaurant, taken from Champuan Bridge

Recently Julie helped organise a literary event there that included a delicious 4 course meal, the highlight of which was a rather lovely dessert of chocolate mousse duo (orange and espresso).

Not sure when I will get the opportunity to visit Ubud again, but when I do I think Bridges will be on my list of local attractions.

 

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Chocolate Unwrapped 2011

Another Year. Another Chocolate Week.

We finished the week with a visit to Chocolate Unwrapped at Vinopolis.  This is its third year and it’s been getting bigger by the year. Vinopolis is an excellent venue for this type of event, nice high ceilings to keep the temperature down and lots of room for growth.

The first person we spotted as we walked in was Paul Wayne Gregory. He was keen to tell us that he now has a boxed selection of his chocolates that is entirely made up of award winners.  We also had some more of Duffys Chocolate (their chocolate was used in both the chocolate dinners I went to during Chocolate Week at The Providores and Almeida).

I tried to find Lauden Chocolates (one of my favorites), but if they were there I missed them. I did spot a tweet from them saying they had such a good day on the Saturday that they had sold out, so perhaps they didn’t managed to restock for the Sunday session.  Matcha Chocolat another favorite from last year was also no where to be seen.   However Chocolate Unwrapped for me is all about discovering something new.  This year my discovery was Pacari Ecuadorian Organic Chocolate bars, specifically the Raw Chocolate with Salt & Nibs (70% Cacao) and Lemongrass (60% Cacao) – this is seriously grown up chocolate.

We had a quick chat with Paul A Young and on the recommendation of a friend I also bought some of his very distinctive Pumpkin flavoured chocolates.

We were brave enough (or was that foolish enough) to  try some chocolate wine too – it was an interesting novelty, but didn’t really work for me.

The event seemed to have more of an International vibe this year, lots of French accents around.  We also visited stands from Hungry, Switzerland and Italy.

 

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Foodies Festival @ Battersea Park

This years London Foodies Festival was in Battersea Park. We arrived just after 10 am, the tickets and web site (initially) showed that as the event start time.   Our plan had been to get in early before the crowds.  However the festival was not able to start until 11 am due to some sort of mix up with the local council – not a good start.   So we killed some time in the parks cafe (definitely not a foodies destination) and returned to pick up entrance tickets for some of the events in the Chefs Theatre, Food Theatre and Drinks Theatre, only to be advised we could only get tickets for the earlier events and not those later in the day, we had to come back to the Registrations tent nearer the start times to get these tickets  – a totally impractical option. On entering the festival area we passed the Pimms Tent with its cute “Its Pimms O’Clock” picnic blankets laid out on the grass, and found ourselves accepting an invitation to try some of the Coeur de Cognac in the comfort of the Remy Martin Pagodo.

The festival was not especially large, the one at Hampton Court last year felt larger and had seemed more specialist food oriented.   We ended up sampling a couple of rums – a coconut one (Koko Kanu) from Jamaica and a lovely smooth Arehucas Honey Rum from the Canary Islands.  Then after a long chat with Chocolatier Fiona Sciolti who was presenting one of the afternoon sessions we had originally planned to go to, we headed down to the Chefs Theatre for Jun Tanaka’s cookery demonstration.

That went well, with Jun Tanaka producing three dishes in less than 40 minutes. Afterwards we were certainly ready to have something to eat.

The food on offer was not that inviting – except for the rather nice charcuterie plates being served up in the Harvey Nichols Foodmarket Marquee which we spotted after we had eaten (isn’t that always the way!).

We did find some gems though among the exhibitors, like the beautifully presented cake selection from The Little Round Cake Company and the huge selection of speciality breads from McCarthy’s.  The highlight however had to be Mr Ducks Delicacies at the 1Chef4u stand where we sampled some lovely smooth and sumptuous Fois Gras and some delicious Duck Rillette.

The next session we attended in the Food Theatre was totally disorganised with real confusion over who had tickets and who did not, since some were collected on the door and other collected at the tables. So that sort of put us off attending any more events.

Having already been round all the stands once, we decided  to call it a day and returned to the 1Chef4u stand to buy some of the lovely duck delicacies, picked up some bread from McCarthy’s and a chilled bottle of Bochet-Lemoine Champagne and headed home to have our own picnic.

The festival this year I have to say was not a patch on the last Foodies event I attended. Indeed the most enjoyable stands were selling goods that I could just as easily have found at a decent Farmers Market (or in the case of  Mr Ducks Delicacies on line), rather than at a ticketed event.  It’s definitely was not worth the £15 full ticket price or even dare I say the two for one deal. So I am afraid this is one event I probably won’t put on my calendar for next year. Sadly this is not the only food and drinks festival I have been disappointed with over the last year or so, Taste of London, Toast – New Zealand and La Dolce Vita did not hit the mark either.

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Easter Chocolate Festival @ Southbank Centre – Hot Chocolate!

It’s Easter (well almost), so chocolate indulgence is a compulsory activity. Who needs boring shop bought Easter Eggs when you have the Chocolate Festival at the Southbank Centre.

The sun was out in force today but not enough to melt the chocolate fortunately.   As you would expect there was lots of Easter Eggs on display.  I photographed some of the prettiest ones and the largest one too, which apparently gets broken up and recycled after the event! – Chocolate is just so versatile 😉

This festival is growing but it’s not as large or as well attended yet as Chocolate Unwrapped.  The live chocolate themed demonstrations were free today. However they were very busy and it was definitely too hot to sit in a marquee, so I focused on the stalls outside.  Interesting ones included Miki’s a very artistic chocolate company who produce handcrafted Japanese inspired fair-trade organic chocolates. They make a lot of their own moulds, including Kamen (mask) shaped ones (photographed above).  Another stand I was drawn to was the Alice in Wonderland inspired Lucky’s –  I could not resist the Humpty Dumpty eggs, with creamy filing in the shell. I bought a couple of the chestnut puree ones,  hopefully I can keep Humpty safe until Easter.

Artisan du chocolat were there too, they had English Breakfast Eggs on display – white, dark and milk chocolate eggs flavoured with bacon, mushrooms and tomato. I was a bit dubious and would have liked to have tried them, but alas there were no samples. I did however try their fresh Moroccan Mint chocolates instead which were excellent.

Chocolate inspired drinks were also available at Chocy Woccy’s.  Snickers, Mars and Bounty milkshakes and some delicious sounding cocktails too, made with a lovely selection of ingredients, like Chilli, Mint, Vodka, Bailey’s, Rum, Butterscotch, Schnapps, Coffee liquor and Chocolate.

Another interesting find was the Cafe On stall which had a wonderful range of Loretta Liu’s macarons. They really had their act together using a small portable fridge to keep the macarons cool.  So okay, macarons are not chocolate but I was glad they were part of the festival.  I bought a few and will update this post later with my thoughts on them.  Timeout included them in its list of Londons best Macarons and put them in the illustrious company of Ladurée and Pierre Hermé, so I am really looking forward to trying them out.

🙂 HAPPY EASTER from No Expert 🙂

UPDATE : Macaron Tasting – I finished off the Loretta Liu macarons today. They were all light, sweet and chewy. The Mango flavoured one I enjoyed the most. I found the Green Tea one was too strong and the Cointreau Vanilla one too subtle. I had trouble recognising the flavours for the remaining ones.  One of the Pink ones, which I believe was the Lychee Martini, was overly sweet. I guess you find the flavours you like and stick to them. Cafe On certainly have enough flavours to choose from. For my palette based on a selection of 5 macarons, I would give them 6 out 10. I still prefer Ladurée though, but they are double the price.

 

 

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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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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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