S. Worthen | Weblog

Clear blue skies, clement temperatures, talented chefs, good food, and lots of freebies: my annual four hours at the Taste of London flew by in a whirl of decadence, scribbled notes, and sporadic light conversation.

I used up half-an-hour of those scant four at a colorful cooking demonstration being given by the chef at Tamarind, a really good Indian restaurant. He was being hosted by some guy who referred to working with Gordon in Tamarind's kitchen, but he never did think to introduce himself. While on the whole, I tried to focus on new-to-me restaurants and products, I failed to resist the lure of finding out who the chef behind Tamarind is; nor did I resist the lure of the one-day-only L'Enclume booth. The presence of this booth is, indeed, why I knew I had chosen the right day to come to Taste. L'Enclume is a *really* good restaurant.

Taste of London features a decadence of samples. It's one of the many reasons to go. This year, samples ranged from an individually-wrapped seeded California prune to a bottle of iced tea to cherry tomatoes to hearty soup to quivery Malaysian lychee jellies. A supposedly halo-wearing frozen yoghurt was being given away by Sensodyne, the tooth past company. At one point, a particularly spicy pickle killed my taste buds so effectively that I could no longer taste jam, chocolate, or other spicy sauces; a conveniently-placed booth led to my discovery that a G&T is a good counterbalance to aggressive spice. It being only midday, I had intended to stop after one drink, but when I went back to thank the nice G&T people, they comp'd me a second.

At one point in the afternoon, I took five minutes or so to fill out the computerized survey on the event. Subjectively, it went on for a very, very long time, but it is how I discovered I must not really be a food blogger; I hadn't heard of a single blog that the survey asked me if I read. I was so startled that, despite reflective glare, I took photos of the screen so as to record this mysterious list of bloggers. This was one of two ways I rhetorically came to this conclusion this week. The other was that I had not heard of Food Blogger Connect '10, a London-based food blogger convention which was held for its second year, before it happened.

The best part of going to Taste is the chance to sample restaurants dishes - but since I have so much to say about those - and so many photos with which to illustrate them - I'll save them for another post.