Global Feast
Thursday, August 09, 2012One of the first ‘London’ things we did was attend a dinner
out near the Olympic site in Stratford. A fortnight of ‘Global Feasts’ held
every night throughout the Olympics. Now being London, there was some deep
profound meaning to the event in terms of the culinary journey uniting nations
and bringing world peace one canapé at time, but we just saw it as a fun night
out, pretty decent meal and a kinda substitute to watching the games seeing as
we missed out on tickets.
Each night had a different theme in terms of cuisine, along
with a guest chef and guest speaker. The night we booked in for was Feast 15 –
Pacific/New Zealand. Obviously we had visions of lamb and pavlova. The event
was held in the courtyard of Stratford Old Town Hall, a beautifully restored
Victorian building. With welcome cocktail in hand we sat by the fountain and
people watched before being ushered into the Worldscape (aka the table).
The table was seriously impressive. Basically a 3D model of
the latitudes and longitudes of the world. – but a dinner table. Our
explanation won’t do it justice so we’ll just copy and paste here:
Worldscape is a sculptural inhabitable landscape,
using all the world’s contours to create a smorgasbord of unique spaces –
faithful to world geographic geometry, yet deeply unfamiliar as furniture. Worldscape
uses the Equidistant Cylindrical map of the world, where all degrees are equal
lengths in both directions) to create an inhabitable dining environment merging
seat and table.
It was amazing. I think we were sat near Siberia.
The chef for the night was Kiwi (born in Canadia) Anna
Hansen from The Modern Pantry and she cooked an amzing ‘Feast’ – apart from the
fennel. No one likes fennel Anna.
MENU
Canapés
Smoked mussel & fennel seed besan chips, seaweed tartare
Roast beetroot, goats curd & pumpkin seed crostini, Seresin Estate orange oil
Starter
Lemongrass braised cherry tomato, lemon roast fennel, green bean, marinated feta & endive salad, hazelnut crumbs, verjus & manuka honey dressing
Main
Persian spiced lamb rump, roast sweet potato & amchur mash, tahini & moromi miso lemon cream
Dessert
Matcha pavlova, spiced red wine poached tamarillo, yoghurt cream
The guest speaker for the night was this British guy who had
just finished cycling around the world...obviously a second choice as they hadn’t
been able to contact us so we could regale everyone with our trans-continental
rail anecdotes.
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