Global Feast 2012 – culinary trip around the world
I went to a rather interesting dinner over the weekend. It’s called Global Feast and the premise is over 20 days, the event will feature a cuisine from 20 regions around the world. Global Feast is also featuring chefs and supper club owners each night, many of them flying in specifically for the event.
Besides all that, the main feature is the table. The night I went, it wasn’t finished yet but when it’s done, it will be a world map, called a Worldscape. In a nutshell, it’s a “sculptural geographical landscape” based on NASA’s digital map of the world. I wasn’t really sure how to make heads or tails of it, even after it had been explained to us but I do remember it having something to do with the holes in the tables representing the population densities of the world, hence in the Indian and Chinese parts of the world, there wasn’t much table top(! )and the sculptures standing on the table represented the height of mountains and other geographical landscapes.
I’d like to go back and see it when it’s completely constructed.
But anyway, back to the food. It was Northern Europe’s turn the evening I attended and Swedish Chef Linn Soderstrom was in residence along with London supperclub owner Claudia Stachelhaus. We started with some lovely canapes of garlicky cucumber gazpacho and crispy flatbread direct from Sweden with prawns in mayo and dill – the prawns were served with an edible daisy, quite tasty. I like edible flowers. I could have also eaten the whole platter of that flatbread starter.
A very tasty starter of herring with beetroot and brown butter mayonnaise, paired with the 2010 Rabl gruner veltliner was first at dinner. I liked the gruner, dry with white pepper and mineral notes. I also detected a bit of hay in there. However, one of my dining companions had some of the Italian Folonari pinot grigio rose left from earlier in the evening and I thought the red fruits in the wine were a better match to the sweet herring.
The main was Linn’s Grandmother’s Roast Beef baked in porter. Mouthwateringly tender and the porter sauce served over it was delectable as was the blackcurrant jam alongside it. The main was paired with a Portuguese red which came in carafes, so I’m guessing it was a house red of some sort but it was very good. You know those Portuguese red table wines are always such good value.
We finished with Claudia’s German cheesecake topped with fresh strawberries. During dessert we had entertainment in the form of German singer songwriter Gon von Zola (The Budda Cakes), playing an acoustic set. I forgot to mention that every night there will be live entertainment from the country in focus that night.
The food was great and I like the idea of featuring a different cuisine from around the world every night. Global Feast is on every night until Monday, 13th August. More info here. A big thanks to Visit Sweden who invited me along for the evening.