After a long and arduous journey, we’re finally here - blogging live from the BBC Good Food Show 2008. It’s incredibly busy and we’re having some trouble wading through the coach-loads of ravenous senior citizens and GCSE domestic science students, but we’ve already done a full sweep of the mezzanine level - which is cooler, less crowded and full of great British produce. Here’s some of the highlights from our early morning tastings:
- Two glasses of rose champagne from the Moet & Chandon bar - a wonderful way to start the day, but not cheap at £9.95 per (plastic) flute.
- Dips and marinades from DW Dips - these are tasty powders that you can rub into meat, mix with oil for an easy marinade, or add to stir-frys. The Garlic & Herb mixed into a dip is a far cry from anything you’ll get in a supermarket and the spicier Middle Eastern options will be great for barbecues.
- Unpasteurised, cellar-matured Winterdale Shaw - an incredibly smooth hard cheese from Kent. Made just miles from London, this is local produce at it’s best.
- Mature cheddar from Somerset, also unpasteurised - a strong flavour but without the unpleasant harshness of factory-made alternatives. Highly recommended - look out for the lovely lady at Keen’s Cheddar.
- Easy to use Asian sauce pouches from Passage Foods - not synthetic at all and perfect for lazy mid-week dinners. Don’t miss out on the butter chicken simmer sauce or the tom yum pouch. At £1 each, they’re a bargain!
- There’s plenty of chocolate about but our favourite so far is the organic stuff from Cocoa Loco. Bag a brownie and some of their white chocolate with chilli before it's all gone! Also highly recommended is the award-winning Angel Chocolates from the Yorkshire Dales - we’ve just bagged some of their unbelievably creamy milk chocolate slabs.
- Finally, Anila’s Authentic Indian Sauces. It’s a family business serving up some seriously spicy curry sauces, but the Goan option is a milder option packed full of green herbs to give it a light but bold flavour.
Appetites suitably whet, we’re off to the Restaurant Experience to see what London’s top restaurants have to offer. Back soon!
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4:29pm - Well, the hours are flying by and Olympia is still bustling with London's finest foodies and freeloaders. We managed to grab a table in the middle of the Restaurant Experience and headed for Café Spice Namaste. Their spicy chicken masala roti with tamarind sauce was pretty good, but no match for the delicious potato cakes served with a fiery split white pea dahl.
The roast pork belly and apple sauce rolls at Roast looked great, but our next stop was Fulham favourite, Blue Elephant. A decent-sized portion of pad thai packed full of fat prawns and peanuts was well received and the green chicken curry was excellent. They're also giving out calendars and curry paste packs, which is a nice touch. Now experiencing some kind of spice overload, we grabbed two glasses of pink fizz from the bar in the middle of the seating area. Priced at just 4 dining dollars for the pair, they were a lot cheaper than the Moet & Chandon flutes we had earlier and equally drinkable!
Refettorio had run out of tiramisu when we stopped by, and Theo Randall’s chocolate pudding with mascarpone cream was going down a storm too. We‘ll be back for dessert later! Here’s a few other goodies we spotted along the way:
- Seafood And Eat It. Better known to my companion as ‘the tasty crab man’, Richard’s super-fresh and flavoursome crabmeat is now available in Waitrose but he’s doing a great 3 tubs for £10 offer here. That’s one white meat, one brown and one potted - delicious!
- Thunder Toffee Vodka - you can smell this sticky-sweet stand a mile away, but that’s no bad thing. This stuff makes a great toffee martini and adds a welcome kick to a latte.
- Pink Elephant wines - recommended by the guys at Passage Foods, these refreshingly fruity rose wines are great with spicy food. Two bottles for a tenner? Bargain.
Now we're off to do a full tour of the ground floor - back soon!
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5:50pm - Ok, so we missed Heston Blumenthal (twice) but we did manage to share a tiramisu from Refettorio, a couple of seriously good margaritas from the bright and busy Jose Cuervo bar, and a whole lot more along the way:
- Almost healthy and undeniably tasty oven-baked crisps at Crips. (The sweet chilli variety are particularly good for cutting through the citrus sweetness of a margarita).
- Awesome battery powered mini-blenders from Morphy Richards. Small enough to fit in the average kitchen cupboard with no problems, but mighty enough to chop things into oblivion at the touch of a button. They're only £15 and you can't buy them in the shops so make sure you pick one up.
- Huge, light and fluffy focaccia squares from the Soul Bakery. (The chance of ours making it home in one piece? Slim to none.)
- All things garlic from our Isle of Wight favourite - The Garlic Farm. We’ll forgive them for leaving their stash of elephant garlic behind, because their garlic mayo is indecently good.
Things seem to be winding down now, so we’re heading for the Restaurant Experience for one last dish or two. If you’ve got tickets for tomorrow or Sunday, you’re in for a real treat - this is undoubtedly a foodie paradise. Be sure to bring plenty of cash though, because we haven’t seen a soul leaving Olympia empty handed!
Lessons learned? 1) Bring (or buy) a sturdy shopping bag; 2) Take out plenty of cash before you get to the show, because their machines are irritable and charge for withdrawals; and 3) People will eat anything, as long as it's free and speared with a toothpick.
Here's a picture of our final haul. It's an eclectic mix of some of the produce mentioned above, and some last minute purchases like pork and leek bangers from the Sausage Tree; some Funkin Mojito mix pouches; and a Magiknife.
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