I first heard about Hotel TerraVina online some time last year. It’s a boutique hotel situated in the New Forest and was devised by the people who put together the Hotel du Vin chain. The emphasis is on good food and wine (two of our favourite things) and while staying there, you can also learn the art of sabrage.

When we were in Champagne a few years ago, we saw lots of people taking the tops off Champagne bottles with swords but never got the chance to try it ourselves. It seemed like the perfect birthday present for Stephen so I booked it and tried to keep it a secret until the day arrived.

I’m not very good at keeping secrets but I managed this one and on Wednesday afternoon, we drove down to the hotel where we were greeted warmly by the staff before checking into a beautifully decorated bedroom with a view over the nearby forest. The rooms are all named after different types of wine and are all individually decorated, many with roll-top baths in the rooms. The emphasis is definitely on quality with handmade toiletries from nearby Wiltshire in the bathroom and bespoke furniture in the bedroom made by local craftsmen.

As lovely as the room was, we were keen to investigate the well-appointed bar that we had spotted on our arrival. After perusing the open-faced wine cellar, we chose a glass from the extensive and well-researched wine list that specialised in Californian wine. Not the nasty, over-oaked type that was once associated with California but the perfectly balanced, full-bodied examples that we both love. After finishing our wine, we were led outside where Stephen was shown how to use the sabre to remove the Champagne cork by one of the hotel’s expert sommeliers. After the short lesson, it was Stephen’s turn and he did a great job of taking the cork off while making the whole thing look very easy.

Back in the warmth of the bar and while enjoying our Champagne, we were presented with the evening’s menu which had a good selection of both meat and fish dishes (there were probably some vegetarian dishes too but we didn’t register those) with a heavy bias on seasonal and local produce. We struggled to choose as everything sounded wonderful and it was obvious that a lot of time and thought had been put into creating a compact menu with quality ingredients.

I opted for the lasagne of crab and langoustine to start and Stephen chose the loin of rabbit. The presentation of both dishes was beautiful and the flavours certainly didn’t disappoint. Crab and langoustine lasagne is one of my favourite starters and the execution of this dish was stunning. The basil added a slightly unusual note that I hadn’t come across in this dish before but, coupled with the lemongrass, was a fragrant compliment to the sweet and perfectly cooked fish.

Stephen’s rabbit dish was heartier than my fish but was well balanced and just the right size to not be too heavy. Even though I’m not a big fan of beetroot, I could tell that this worked well with the earthy rabbit and was a great nod towards the change in season.

Neither of us could decide between the pork and the venison main courses so we had both with the intention of sharing. I preferred the venison and Stephen the pork so the decision was made for us quite quickly. The standout for me was the slow roast venison which just melted in the mouth. We fought over that as we did the black pudding that accompanied Stephen’s pork: a great combination and one I’ll definitely try again at home.

By the end of the two courses we were both reaching capacity but were so enjoying our time in the restaurant that we ordered a plate of cheese to share which we polished off with some dessert wine. I can’t remember what all the cheeses were but they were the perfect way to finish off a brilliant meal.

Things got a little hazy after that, for which I’ll blame the absinthe fountain. It was great fun and made even more enjoyable by the knowledgeable and charming barman who was happy to answer our questions. The full English breakfast we ate the next morning was definitely required to heal our heads and was prepared with just the same level of care and attention as the food had been the night before.

It was a brilliant trip and I can’t fault the food, the wine or the service. Since it was a gift, I can’t reveal the price here but it was great value and if you’re looking for a slightly unusual way to celebrate then I would definitely recommend the sabrage break. The hotel also offers a number of other wine breaks often with visiting winemakers which we hope to return for next year.

At some point we had decided that this sort of dinner was a good idea, and then the conversation had turned to wine. As these things often do, the result was a competition: old world vs new world. We would have two wines with each course – one old world and one new – and would vote which matched the food the best. So Kerri and I did some organising and preparation and then arrived at our hosts’ lovely house at 2pm to start preparations and cooking.

Due to a lot of rushing around and cooking and serving, etc, the pictures aren’t great, but do give an idea of what the food was like.

First up was smoked mackerel pate, served on a little piece of melba toast and a slice of prosciutto. These were inspired by something similar that we had eaten at the Bull and Last, except with the toast instead of soda bread; we tried both and our pate went better with the toast. These toasts didn’t turn out quite as melba-ish as we’d planned, but time was too short to start again. We had tried to find air dried Cumbrian ham to use instead of the prosciutto, but it was hard to find in London and ordering from a web site would have meant paying twice as much in postage as for the ham itself. These worked out very well and tasted great; they were served as pre-dinner snacks rather than as a formal course.

The Cloudy Bay sauvignon blanc which was the new world wine choice went very well with these. The Donnhoff Nahe riesling which was the old world choice was really good, but wasn’t the best match for the food. 1-0 to new world.

Next up was the main starter. Slow roasted pork belly, which had been roasted at 140C for four hours. Afterwards we removed the skin and put it back into the oven to crisp up, which worked very well. That and the salting it the day before and pouring boiling water over it before cooking… we tend to take the crackling quite seriously! With this, pan-fried scallops and some lightly cumin-scented cauliflower puree.

The new world wine choice for this was Fromm Clayvin pinot noir – another New Zealand offering and a nice wine and went well with the pork belly. The old world wine was a white Chateauneuf du Pape from Domaine Chante Cigale which was a better match for the dish as a whole. 1-1 draw.

The quick between-courses course of watercress soup didn’t have a wine match with it.

Next up was “lamb two ways” which was a roast shoulder with garlic and rosemary, along with a pan-fried cutlet. The lamb was from Dorset and really good. We should have taken a picture of a neater plate for this dish though. The lamb was perched on top of dauphinoise potatoes, and was served with baby carrots and some green beans with hazelnuts. There was a sauce made from some of the rosemary-and-garlic lamb juices with mint and capers added to it.

The new world wine choice was Kanonkop Paul Sauer, a South African Bordeaux blend. This had a lovely nose and went very well with the lamb, the tannins balancing out the richness of the lamb shoulder and the potatoes. The old world choice was Fattoria le Sorgenti Gaiaccia which is an Italian blend in the “super Tuscan” style, i.e. traditional sangiovese blended with international grape varieties, in this case merlot. This also went very well with the lamb and developed some lovely savoury flavours in the glass that complemented the sauce. When voting on this course, it turned out to be a draw, with four votes each. So still on a draw overall…

Dessert was lemon posset with blackberries and shortbread. We had planned to make tuile biscuits to go with this but had failed in our attempts, so made shortbread instead, which worked out well.

New world wine was Essensia Orange Muscat from the USA, which almost matched the lemon, but had quite an orangey note to it that didn’t quite go. The old world wine was Chateau La Tour Blanche Sauternes, which was voted as the better match; its flavours and sweetness matched the lemon posset and its full body matched the creamy texture. Could only afford a half bottle of it though, sadly. 2-1 to old world.

The final course was a selection of British cheeses, which we sadly neglected to photograph. The cheeses were Stichelton (similar to Stilton, but made in a slightly different way to produce a fuller but gentler taste), Keen’s cheddar, a goat cheese that might have been Ragstone but I can’t remember now, and of course Stinking Bishop.

The new world choice was a Concha y Toro Carmenere from Chile, which went well with the cheese. The old world was a 20 year old Tawny Port, which I enjoyed but most people felt it was too sweet after we’d just had dessert wine with dessert. So the new world won that one, bringing it to 2-2 overall!

There was brief discussion of some sort of tie-breaker, but nothing really materialised. We had a really interesting range of wines across the board, and certainly some that we wouldn’t have chosen had we not been trying to match them up to something in particular. So a good job all round on that front and the draw was probably a fair outcome.

With two wines per course and five courses, there were of course a lot of glasses on the table:

I wrote most of this post up about a week ago and have since been thinking about how to edit it down a bit, being as it was just a big list of tasting notes with a little commentary in between. I failed in that. Mostly because seeing as I had taken the trouble to write the notes in the first place and then to type them up, I couldn’t bear to delete any of it. So apologies if it’s all a bit long-winded.

There were quite a few people there and we chatted for a while before the very entertaining Willie started introducing the wines that were laid out for tasting on three different tables. A gesture from Dan quarter of the way through let him know that he was going a tad slowly, so he sped up his explanations for the rest of them. After that, people slowly morphed into groups and wandered towards tables. Kerri and I both found ourselves at the white wine table first, which suited us fine as it meant we could go through the wines in the generally accepted tasting order. Each table was split into two halves, each of which would be a variety or type of wine and each half would contain three wines. Dan had put these together from what he could easily source from Bibendum’s impressively wide wine range.

The white table was split into chardonnay and Rhône varietals. The first wine was an Italian chardonnay and pinot grigio blend rather than a straight chardonnay. This was Alois Lageder Biodynamic Chardonnay Pinot Grigio 2008 from Dolimiti, Italy. I have put down “pale gold” for the colour of most of these wines; not sure if that is genuine or if the lighting made me put that or if I was just a bit blinkered. Medium intensity wine with a biscuity aroma reminiscent of some Alsace pinot gris wines (clearly the pinot grigio side of this wine does not fall into the normal neutral / boring Italian version), with white flowers and light peach and a medium length finish.

Next up was St Romain Clos sous la Chateau Domaine des Forges 2006 from Burgundy in France. This had significant vanilla, toast and oak flavours to it; more so than most white Burgundies. Probably something to do with it coming from the same town in which one of the world’s largest oak barrel producers is based. Also peach, citrus and mineral notes. A potential favourite amongst the whites for me.

The last of the chardonnay section was Howard Park Chardonnay 2007, Great Southern, Western Australia. Australian chardonnay has had something of a bad rep for being over-oaked, over-sweet, flabby and not very interesting. But this one was different. Coming from Western Australia, which is one of the cooler wine regions in Australia, the grapes have a lot more character than those that go into the notorious Australian Chardonnays of the mass producers. Winemakers from Western Australia often point out that they only make 5% of the wine in Australia, but win most of the awards. This wine had ripe fruit, with peach standing out, which was balanced by good acidity and a light toasty note with some mineral characteristics too. A lovely wine, showing off Australia’s quality white wine potential very well.

The second half of the white table was entitled “Rhone White Varietals”, which was a collection of varietal wines (i.e. made from only one grape variety) from across the world that were based on varieties that were originally grown in either the northern or southern Rhone regions in France.

The first was from McLaren Vale in South Australia. We talked about Western Australia being a quality wine region rather than a bulk region and McLaren Vale is similar, and particularly known for Shiraz. This wine was 100% Roussanne, which is grown in the Rhone but can be a difficult grape to grow, being low cropping and prone to disease. Because of this, Rhone producers usually grow just a small amount of it and usually blend it with the more reliable Marsanne. In these blends, Marsanne gives the body and Roussanne provides an aromatic fruitiness. This being 100% Roussanne was aromatic and fruity indeed, very ripe from being grown in sunny McLaren Vale and tasted of cooked or tinned apricots with orange blossom and honeysuckle notes. It had a medium to full body and a slightly oily texture.

Next up was our new friend Marsanne, which was produced in its spiritual home, the Rhone itself, specifically in Crozes-Hermitage which is the younger sibling of the well known Hermitage. It had a low acidity and also had some honeysuckle notes, along with a light spice reminiscent of aniseed. It had a very oily texture which gave it a full body.

The last on the list was a Viognier which is grown around the world now but used to be mostly confined to Condrieu in the northern Rhone. In fact it almost died out as a commercial grape variety and there were very few acres of them left due to difficulty in growing it. However, over time people recognised its potential… as well as the money they could get for a bottle of it… and started planting it more widely. This particular example is from California and I found it well balanced, which I wasn’t expecting – both California and Viognier are known for high alcohol content which particularly in combination could lead to a rather unbalanced wine. Apricots again, this time dried rather than tinned, and more honeysuckle notes along with spice. Fullish in body again. A favourite of the table with some people in our group.

All the groups did manage to finish their first table visits at roughly the same time, so we moved onto the next. We were presented with three roses and three pinot noirs. In fact there were four pinot noirs because the last of the roses was made from it too. First up was a pale pink rose made from 50% grenache, 35% syrah (shiraz to some people) and 15% mourvedre and produced in Lirac in the southern Rhone. It didn’t seem to have greath depth of flavour and not many people felt it would be one of their favourites. It did have light strawberry and redcurrant notes with a creamy texture and some light space on the finish.

The next rose was a slight step up in flavour concentration and was made entirely from grenache, in this case in the guise of “garnacha” from just across the border in Calatayud, Spain. It was a medium pink colour, with strawberry, floral and orange notes and an interestingly nutty savoury finish.

The last of the three roses was a pinot noir from Adelaide Hills in South Australia, again a higher quality region of Australia which gives well balanced wines. This was off-dry rather than completely dry and tasted of red cherries and strawberry, with light leather aroma and noticable acidity. My favourite of the roses.

The first of the reds was the top contender for my favourite of the evening. It was a red Burgundy from Volnay, which is made as all quality red Burgundy is, from 100% pinot noir. It was a medium garnet colour, with cherry and meaty flavours, along with some light vegetal or forest floor notes and a cinnamon and clove spice. There were noticable tannins but they were not astringent and gave the wine a firm backbone to hold the other flavours together.

From there we moved onto a Chilean pinot noir, which was a ruby colour and also had a nose of cherry and spice, but the fruit had a jammy quality rather than being refined as in the Burgundy. It also tasted quite strongly of vanilla and had a tarry note, giving the impression it had had a little too much cheap oak contact.

The next pinot noir was from New Zealand, and in particular from Marlborough, which is better known for its sauvignon blanc. This one was ruby with a purple tint, with a cherry flavour and floral lavender notes. It seemed that it should have promise bit came across as a bit one-dimensional to me, it probably needs a couple of years to develop.

On to the final table, which was all reds and was split into Cabernet Sauvignon and Shiraz / Syrah, two of the best known red grapes from around the world. The first cabernet that we tasted was a 2004 from Mendoza in Argentina, produced by Catena who recently won the Decanter magazine’s Winemaker of the Year award. It was a garnet colour, showing its 5 years of age, with intense blackcurrant, dark plum, cedar and toast flavours. Medium acidity and a medium to full body. From the description that I wrote down, it sounds like it should have been good, but I didn’t give it that good a score, so it must not have impressed at the time.

Next up was a wine from the spiritual home of cabernet sauvignon – Bordeaux. This wine was from 2005 and hailed from Pauillac, a sub-region of Bordeaux which is well known for being the home of some of the biggest names in Bordeaux. Bordeaux wines are usually a blend of cabernet sauvignon with merlot and cabernet franc, with a couple of other grapes added in small amounts. Again, it had a medium garnet colour, with quite a deep core and on the nose there were notes of cedar, cigar box, plums and licorice. It was medium bodied, with medium to high ripe tannins and medium-high acidity too. Would be brilliant with roast beef.

The last of the cabernet trio was my second favourite of the evening, De Trafford 100% cabernet from Stellenbosch in South Africa, again from 2005. A deep garnet with a pronounced nose and flavour of blackcurrants, blackberries, cedar, violets, earth and eucalyptus. It had a full body with a lot of ripe tannin and medium acidity.

On to the first of the shiraz selection, which was 100% shiraz from California, 2008. It was a medium ruby colour with garnet tint and notes of flint, spice, licorice and smoke going well with the black cherry fruit and violet floral aroma. Quite a complex wine for one of this price from California.

The next was a blend from Cotes du Roussillon in the south of France. It contained 40% syrah along with 40% grenache and 20% carignan. It had slightly confected cherry fruit with white pepper spice. Notes were getting a bit sparse at this point!

The last was from Hunter Valley in Australia, from 2005. It was a bland of 92% shiraz with 8% tannat. It had lots of black cherry fruit, with a little plum fruit too, ripe bit not jammy.

After all the tasting, people filled up with a little of their favourites and continued to chat for a while until it was time to go. I tried to get another taste of the Volnay but it had disappeared by the time I got there, so I settled for some of the De Trafford cabernet instead.

A really interesting and informative evening, so many thanks to Dan for organising it and to the other Bibendum staff who presented the wines. We paid a (not so) quick visit to the pub afterwards of course and it was really interesting chatting to them all about the wines and of course wine and life in general.

I don’t know much about gin, apart from that I like the occasional gin and tonic and I really don’t like Bombay Sapphire, so was really looking forward to visiting the Beefeater distillery and learning a bit more about how gin is made.  The distillery isn’t open to the public and is based in a beautiful old building in Kennington where it’s been made since 1957, the opportunity to wander around somewhere that would normally be off-limits was something else to get excited about.

The tour was run by the master distiller, Desmond Payne, who has been with Beefeater for 15 years.  Before that he was at Plymouth gin for 25 years so he really knows his stuff.  He took us on a short tour of the distillery where he explained how they make Beefeater gin before guiding us through a comparative tasting.

During the distillery tour, Desmond explained that the definition of gin is something along the lines of “predominately flavoured with juniper”, the juniper is therefore (obviously!) one of the most important ingredients.  Desmond tests 150 varieties each autumn to ensure quality is maintained in the Beefeater gin.  Aside from the juniper it’s really up to the distiller what other botanicals they add, Beefeater use the original recipe which is x years old and contains: juniper, orange, lemon, almond, orris root, licquorice, coriander and angelica seed root. They make 2.4 million cases of the stuff a year.

The comparative tasting was one of the most enjoyable parts of the afternoon for me, we tasted six different types of gin and I was surprised at just how different they were.  We’ve been drinking Tanqueray and Hendricks at home lately but not at the same time so I haven’t really been able to compare the two, apart from recognising the distinctive cucumber note in the Hendricks.  Tasting the gin without tonic to confuse the flavours was also something new to me and allowed us to really understand what the different botanicals add.  Initially, I found the Beefeater to be slightly rougher than the other examples and really enjoyed the Plymouth gin we tasted directly after the Bombay Sapphire.  Coming back to the Beefeater having tasted all six varieties, I was aware of how punchy the botanicals were and just what they added to the overall flavour; the Beefeater was definitely more subtle that the showy, upfront Bombay Sapphire and generally had a lot more character than the Tanqueray.  The Plymouth was my favourite though, well balanced with complex layers of flavour, smooth and with a long finish.

After we’d finished our tasting, we enjoyed a Beefeater Gin and Tonic in the bar which was wonderfully refreshing on what was a hot afternoon.  The addition of orange to the glass was unusual but really helped to bring out the orange note in the Beefeater gin without overpowering the other flavours.

We have been on a draconian clear-the-freezer mission lately, and as it turned out we had both chicken legs and red curry paste in there.  Which meant that we needed to make red curry with chicken of course.  It was shop paste rather than home made, we must admit; hence we had loads of it and ended up freezing what we didn’t use the first time round.

We didn’t use a recipe this time, just followed our instincts and followed a similar approach to what we use for our green curry.  It was full of rich chilli and coconutty loveliness with a bit of a kick but not too much.  Along with the chicken, we added baby corn, pea aubergines, lime leaves and holy basil.

We drank an Alsace gewurtztramminer with it and the flavour matched the flavours in the curry very well, with the full body also standing up to the creaminess.  There was a little too much heat in the curry for it to be a perfect match and it brought out the alcohol in the wine a bit, but that is generally to be expected with curry!

Last night, Kerri and I went to to an Alsace wine tasting at Green and Blue in East Dulwich.  We have been there before for a rather intruiging wine and chocolate tasting and were excited about going back, so much so that on the evening of an impending Tube strike, we ventured out there without knowing how we were going to get home.

Green and Blue are running a three-month promotion on Alsace wines at the moment, which was the reason for the complimentary tasting, and they are also offering some specially chosen dishes that complement the wines well.  I have been quite partial to Alsace wine for several years now, but don’t drink it very often.  There is something very seductive about the aromatic bouquet of the wines from that region.  They can verge on the slightly too sweet side at times and it is hard to tell just from looking at the bottle which ones do, but none of those that we had over the course of the evening fell into that category.

For those that don’t know, Alsace is situated in north eastern France, on the border with Germany.  It is in the rain shadow of the Vosges mountains, which means that it is dry and sunny, while its northerly latitude ensures that it is not too hot.  These make for ideal vine-growing conditions.  Being so close to Germany, and having been part of Germany on and off over its history, there are a number of German influences in the region and one of these is that their wine is sold in tall, German style “flute” bottles.  This does tend to put people off them though, which is unfortunate.  On the other hand though, it is one of very few French wine regions that actually puts the name of the grape variety on the label, which is helpful to the modern international wine drinker who doesn’t have time to study the intricacies of the Appellation Controllee system.

Okay, enough background and onto the business of the tasting itself.  The first of the dishes was marinated artichokes.  Artichokes are notoriously difficult to pair with any wine as something in their chemistry or flavour profile just clashes with most wines and leaves a nasty, metallic taste in the mouth.  So we were pleasantly surprised to find that they went rather well with the Muscat.  There was a brief hint of nasty metallic taste forming, but it soon gave way to a pleasing merge of flavours that for some reason also made the mouth water rather a lot.  Maybe this is what washed the nasty taste away?  Either way, the result was good.

Reading the back label of the bottle (this was the only one of the four bottles that sported such a modern invention), it made mention of the pink sandstone on which the vineyard was situated.  Having just had a look over the Alsace section in my wine diploma text book on the way to the tasting to get some background, one thing that I do remember is that it said that the pink sandstone of the area was generally not very high in minerals and therefore not very useful for growing wine.  So it surprised me to read that on the label; not only did they grow it there, but they were proud enough of it to put it on the label.  It was a light and delicate wine though, so maybe the lack of minerality was a good thing in this case – no smokiness or earthiness to get in the way of the delicately grapey and floral muscat fruit (yes, this was a wine that actually tasted like grapes!)

Next up was crab with dill mayonnaise and toast, which was served with a Riesling.  This was a lovely Riesling, with the nose full of honey, grapefruit and minerality and the same flavours on the palate with a high dose of acidity which gave it a lovely length.  This was probably my favourite wine of the evening.  It did match the crab well, but I felt that it would have gone better had there been a little lemon in the crab and/or mayonnaise.  We discussed this with Kate who was running the tasting and she said you’d need to be careful not to put in too much lemon which would make it too acidic and make the wine taste flabby in comparison.  As it was a wine high in acidity I think it could have taken a little, or maybe just some lemon zest and not too much juice.

Then we were served a slice of Popina aubergine tart along with a glass of Gerwurtztramminer.  Gerwurtztramminer is a very aromatic grape and makes wines that are fruity, floral, low in acidity and rarely completely dry and are usually paired with spiced foods, so I found this match interesting.  Interesting and very good; it was my favourite pairing of the evening.  The tart contained the aubergine and also sweet fruitiness from tomatoes and pepper, along with some caramelised onion and a touch of black pepper spice.  All of this combined to make the perfect match for the wine.

Last up was a smoked chicken breast with dried red pepper and this was served with a Pinot Gris.  It can be strange to think that the rich, aromatic, sometimes biscuity Pinot Gris from Alsace is the same grape that makes rather bland Pinot Grigio from Italy and elsewhere.  By this time my tasting notes were getting a little sparse, but I do remember that this was also a very good match, second only to the tart/gewurtz match that preceded it.  Eating a slice of the chicken with a little of the pepper at the same time created a flavour combination that paired very well with the wine.

So all in all a lovely evening with some rather good food and wine and some interesting and very successful pairings of the two.  And to have it with Alsace wine too was really enjoyable for me in particular, given how fond I am of it.  I feel a little like it’s under appreciated and I should go around telling people to drink more of it.  Hopefully people will try it some of it because of this three-month promotion and come back for more.

Food and wine matching is something that we sometimes try to do, but usually we’ll end up drinking wine before a meal, then just eating the meal and then drinking more wine afterwards.  And all too often we’ll pick a particular wine to match the meal, then end up finishing it before we start eating and need to open another, less well matched bottle to drink with the meal.  Bad planning.  Or too much drinking.  Or both.

As for the transport situation, luckily someone else had looked up a bus to get him home and it took us most of the way home too, after which we soon found another bus to get us the rest of the way, which was nice.

The Sportsman has been on our list of restaurants to visit for a long time, years probably.  We both love Whitstable and try to spend as much time as we can there in Summer, the Sportsman is just up the road in Seasalter but we never seem to stray much further than the local cafes and restaurants.  This time, we booked well in advance so nothing was left to chance and we were lucky to find that Saturday was warm and sunny.

Stephen recently completed the second part of his wine diploma so, to celebrate, we started with some sparkling wine.  As he’s currently studying sparkling wine for the next part of his diploma this seemed a fitting option.

I started with some rock oysters with chorizo.  Whitstable is famous for it’s oysters so this was a must-have, and they didn’t disappoint.  Incredibly fresh and tasting like the sea, they went perfectly with the hot chorizo.

Stephen opted for the pork terrine, well, he didn’t have a lot of choice actually as I really wanted it but had already decided on the oysters.  He didn’t take much persuading though and I’m pretty sure he was happy with his ‘choice’.  The terrine contained lovely, large pieces of well-seasoned pork and was served with some toasted sourdough, mustard, pickles and some incredible pork scratchings which the Sprotsman is known for.

One of our friends ordered the asparagus, bacon and poached egg salad which, although I didn’t taste it, was said to be very good.  The chunky, cured bacon was the star of the dish.

Next up was seared thornback ray, brown butter, cockles with a sherry vinegar dressing.  I’d not had this kind of fish before and I really enjoyed it.  It was meaty and worked well with the slightly acidic dressing.  It was a huge serving, made even bigger by the cockles on top.  They were good but a little over-shadowed by the ray.

Stephen ordered the seared turbot with a crab sauce which was both meaty in texture and full of flavour.  The delicate crab flavour stood up well to the turbot and the buttery sauce.  I think there’s some asparagus hiding under here too.

Lastly was the lamb option which we all wanted but overlooked as we were by the sea and keen to taste the local fish.  This was local lamb from Monkshill Farm just down the road in Canterbury, served with dauphinoise potatoes and a side order of shepherd’s pie.

Not pictured are the elederflower ice-lollies given to the children (which we were all disappointed not to have had for ourselves) and the tiny mouthfuls of sticky, dense chocolate brownies served with coffee.  We left after two hours to walk on the beach but could have happily stayed all afternoon.

A few weeks ago, following a very successful bloggers visit to Tayabb’s, the idea of Eating Eurovision was born. The premise was simple: could 25 food bloggers eat the cuisine of the 25 partaking countries, all within the M25, within 25 hours? This was not to be an exercise in Googling recipes and cooking the dish of your country in the comfort of your own home but an opportunity to investigate the community and converse with the locals.

So, on Thursday night, we trooped en masse to the BBC Television Centre where we sat down to watch the last semi-final and conduct the big draw. After an entertaining (although sometimes painful) couple of hours, the final nine names were announced and we got on with the business of drawing names (ping-pong balls) from a hat (trendy cotton shopping bag). We drew Greece and the Ukraine.

In Greece, we were fairly confident and our research showed us that Palmers Green was were it was at. On arrival, we were lucky enough to meet Sue at the Lefteris Bakery who told us that the bakery had been under current management for 15 years. She doesn’t live in the area anymore, having moved out to Cockfosters but confirmed that there were still a great many Greek families living locally, mostly because there were so many facilities available to them locally (we spotted a bakery, butcher, patisserie, social club and many restaurants, all within a few minutes walk of each other). After purchasing some baklava we asked Sue where she ate with her family, she recommended Spitiko which was just down the road.

On entering Spitiko, we were greeted by Andy and Stellios who, while slightly bemused, were both happy to answer our stream of questions. Stellios has been running Spitiko for nine years but has been living in the area for the last 40, having originally arrived in London to study. He explained that many Greeks have now moved away from the area; some, like Sue, moving further out to Cockfosters and Southgate but many returning to Greece. He was very proud of the restaurant and the food they served which he told us was nothing like the new stream of Greek restaurants that have opened up recently. These, according to Stellios, are all run by Greek wives who are not chefs and believe that making kebabs is all there is to Greek food. His language started to get more colourful at this point but I’ll gloss over that and tell you about the food.

Conscious of the crossover between Greek and Cypriot food, we were keen to make sure we really were eating the cuisine of our Eurovision country. Andy told us that there wasn’t really much difference between the two and that back in Greece, the cuisine was pretty similar all over the country. Not wanting to disagree, we decided on a selection of mezze, followed by one main course to share. We bravely ordered some Greek wine too which was actually fairly drinkable. We started with a familiar selection of hummus, halloumi, calamari and dolmades which was all very fresh and well cooked. The main course of lamb souvla was interesting, spit roasted lamb ribs served with roast potatoes. The meat was tenderand had taken on a wonderful smokiness from the charcoal grill.

After our big fat Greek lunch we were feeling rather sleepy, which threw our Ukrainian exploits off course a little. Conveniently, one of Stephen’s cousins has a Ukrainian girlfriend, Nataliia, who we interrogated briefly. She assured us that the “most common and best” Ukrainian food is golubtsi… more on that later.

We managed to get a bus to East Finchley on the way back from Palmers Green where we visited Dacha, which calls itself a “Russian and Ukrainian Delicatessen Shop”. We wandered in and were greeted in Russian by the lady running the shop. We smiled and nodded and said “hello”, which made her look rather surprised; it was obvious that we were the foreigners in this particular context. We started browsing, without really knowing what we were looking for, but were hoping that it would jump out at us when we found it.

There were quite a variety of foods, including frozen dumplings of various sorts, biscuits, lots of pickles and relishes and other jars, along with some freshly made, refrigerated dishes. After a few minutes of browsing, we were having trouble identifying which were Ukrainian rather than Russian (or Lithuanian or Estonian, which were mentioned on a lot of labels and would have been easier) so clearly we needed to ask the lady for some help. Or so we thought. She replied, saying “I’m sorry, I don’t speak English” in perfect English. If you don’t speak English then you probably get quite practiced at saying that particular phrase, but it can be rather odd to hear it pronounced so well. She did try to help, but we completely failed to to make ourselves understood – no amount of pointing and saying “Ukraine” was met with anything other than shrugs of incomprehension.

Luckily at this point another customer arrived and spoke Russian to the lady running the shop, so we asked her if she spoke English (which she did, thankfully) and asked if she minded translating a few things for us (which she didn’t, thankfully). Having broken through the communication barrier, we were eventually shown to several Ukrainian foods, including chocolates, biscuits on a string, and a couple of the pre-prepared, refrigerated dishes which looked promising. One of which was the golubtsi that we’d been told was the “best” Ukrainian food, so that was a breakthrough at least. Another was a very mayonnaisey olivje salad. We decided to buy some chocolates and biscuits and also ingredients to make up the olivje and golubtsi ourselves. There were a couple of curious bottles of Ukrainian dessert wine on display, but weren’t priced and we didn’t think we particularly needed it anyway, but should at least have taken a picture of them, which we didn’t.

We had planned to visit the Association of Ukrainians in Great Britain (located in Notting Hill) on the way home, but time had been getting away from us and the Greek food and wine was taking its toll, making us nod off on the Tube on the way. Luckily we were awake at the important changing points, so we did eventually make it home. We called the AUGB and asked them a few questions – we were put through to The Librarian who suggested that we come down to The Library and have a look at the books there for information. But we couldn’t fit that in, so not a lot of background history, sorry.

So, back to the food. For both of the dishes, recipes vary from place to place and family to family of course. The general recipe for olivje salad is fairly simple: Take cooked potato, cooked carrot, boiled egg and cooked sausage and chop these up into similarly sized pieces, roughly centimetre cubes. Add some cooked peas, mayonnaise and salt to taste. Mix together. Eat. This is similar to the Russian Salad that is always to be found on the menu in tapas bars; I’ve ordered it several times and always enjoy the first mouthful but after that find the overbearing mayonnaiseyness too much to handle. The olivje in the Russian and Ukrainian Delicatessen Shop had also been heavy on the mayonnaise, so our version probably wasn’t authentic, but I did eat the lot and rather enjoyed it.

Making golubtsi involves making a meat and rice filling, then wrapping this in cabbage leaves and stewing / steaming this in stock or tomato juice. The similarity between this and the dolmades that we’d had for lunch was not lost on us. We mixed pork mince with rice, onion, tomato paste and parsely and then wrapped this mixture in blanched cabbage leaves, cooking them in a mixture of beef stock and tomato puree. The tomato left strange-looking red lines around the golubtsi , but at least our rolling skills were just good enough for them to hold together during cooking. We were completely stuffed by this point, but just tasted a couple – they were nice but needed a bit more seasoning. And probably various accompaniments that Nataliia had told us about, e.g. sour cream, parsley and mixed salad.

We both knew a little about Greek cuisine before we embarked on Eating Eurovision but knew nothing about the Ukrainian community or their cuisine. While we didn’t manage to find out too much about how Ukranians live in the UK, we did at least learn that their food is similar to that of Russia and Latvia. Chatting to the Greek community in Palmers Green was really enjoyable and eating authentic food cooked by someone who cares is always a good thing. I’m glad we decided not to go to the Real Greek now.

One down side of all of this is that we really loved the hummus at the Greek restaurant. That doesn’t sound like a down side I know, but we tend to eat a fair amount of hummus at home and the lovely freshly made restaurant hummus was streets ahead of the supermarket hummus that we usually eat, thus effectively devaluing the pleasure from any at-home hummus-eating that we indulge in from now on. We’ll just have to start trying to make it ourselves until we can make it that well.

On Wednesday night, Stephen and I made the short trip to the Westbridge in Battersea for a complimentary evening of wine and cheese hosted by Charlie McVeigh (Westbridge owner and cheese provider) and Catavino (wine supplier).

It was a very informal evening and a great opportunity to meet new food and wine bloggers, the wine and cheese was pretty good too. There was a huge selection of wine on offer and, while we both made a valiant attempt at tasting all of it, we didn’t get through it all. Of those we did try, the ones that really stood out were the Chozas Carrascal sparkling wine and the Castro Martin Family Estate Albarino.  Stephen’s notes are quite detailed on the cava detailing the toast, peach and vanilla nose and the earthy, lemon and green flavours in the mouth.  My memory is less detailed but I remember the bubbles being long-lasting and there not being too much acidity (note to self: remember to leave wine write-ups to Stephen in future).

There were also a great number of cheeses but we didn’t manage to photograph them all, possibly because some arrived later in the evening after we had “tasted” a fair amount of wine. I’m certain we managed to try them all though and our favourites were the Tomette Agour Brebis du Pays (a hard sheep’s cheese from the Pays Basque) and the Tête de Moines (from the Bernese Jura), not least because of the Girole which was created especially to use with that particular cheese.

Alongside the cheese and wine, there was also some tea provided by The Rare Tea Company which I learnt was very useful in cleansing the palate in between wines. I have to admit to being a bit rubbish about tea, strong builders tea is all I really drink but it would never have occured to me that tea could be useful for anything other than being a great accompinament to toast before so this was a great lesson.

Sadly, we didn’t get the chance to eat any food from the Westbridge kitchen which might have explained the sore head the following day (as evidenced by the state of Stephen’s shirt in the first picture!). No such sore heads for the wine bloggers though who spent most of the next morning on Twitter teasing the food people for not utilising the spittoon.

On a Thursday night a few weeks ago now, Kerri and I had a wonderful dinner at Tayyab’s with a lot of other London food bloggers.  Tayyab’s, which is situated on a random side street in Whitechapel in London’s East End, has become legendary for its excellent yet ridiculously cheap Pakistani food.  I have been lucky enough to eat there a number of times either with a few friends or with various interesting groups of people over the past several years.  It has been re-invented a few times along the way:  Initially, there was Tayyab’s, which was only open during the day, then New Tayyab opened next door as an evening restaurant.  Now these two have been joined together to create a bigger restaurant, which is good news for everyone as more people can squeeze in to enjoy the delights of Tayyab’s, although there is still usually a sizeable queue!

The restaurant does not sell alcoholic drinks but you can bring your own along, which makes these sorts of evenings particularly entertaining as well as particularly challenging for anyone determined to bring wine rather than beer to go with the food.  The first time I ate at Tayyab’s a number of years ago was also the first time that I remember drinking Alsace wine.  Someone had recommended it as a good accompaniment to spicy food (they were completely correct!) and so I had bought a bottle each of Riesling and Gewurztramminer without knowing a lot about either.  Into the fridge at work they went to keep them cold, then of course there was an hour on the tube to get there and then an hour of standing outside the pub chatting before dinner.  Suffice to say, by the time we got to the restaurant neither bottle was the least bit chilled.  I still really enjoyed them both though and it’s a memory that has always stuck with me, which is surprising given that I suspect I drank most of both bottles myself.

Anyway, back to the present.  We met up at The Good Samaritan pub, which is just a few minutes walk from the restaurant.  This seems to be a ritual.  On arriving at Tayyab’s, we were ushered into the VIP room, past the rather long queue of hungry-looking people.  The VIP room used to be at the side of the New restaurant, but now that they have been joined together, it is situated in the middle of the larger, joined-together restaurant.  There are several large tables in the VIP room and we had two of them for our group:  one round table and one larger, long one.  I was in the middle of one side of the long one, which made it convenient for shouting at people and asking them what they wanted to eat and then passing on the orders to the waiter.

We had brought along an Alsace riesling for old time’s sake, as well as an experiment – a Californian zinfandel in the hope that the spicy, not-too-tannic fruitiness would go well with the food, particularly the legendary lamb chops.  The riesling did go well with chicken and fish dishes, and the zinfandel did go with lamb in various forms, but the bottle that I’d brought was more tannic that I’d planned.  Dan, who was sitting next to me (and knows a lot about wine…) also had a bottle of Zinfandel, but his was less tannic which worked better.

The restaurant had been very kind and put on three delicious roast marinated lamb legs for a main course, so we set about ordering starters.  Of course, we ordered a fair few of the legendary lamb chops, along with various other grilled starters – seekh kebabs, tandoori chicken, masala fish and probably one or two others that I’ve forgotten.  I enjoyed the lamb chops, but they had a heavy dose of chilli that I felt drowned out the other flavours.  Everything was really good; generously spiced with great depth of flavour and succulent too – nothing I ate was overcooked.

Then we tucked into the lamb legs, which had been marinated overnight and roasted for three hours (if my memory serves me correctly) and served on top of a bed of delicous rice, the texture of which reminded me of a baked “Hyderabadi” biryani that I’d cooked once and haven’t encountered much since.

We probably didn’t need to order any more based on the amount of food that we already had, but of course we had to in order to taste things.  So we ordered some “dry meat” curry, which doesn’t sound that appetising from its name but it is really lovely – marined pieces of lamb cooked in a coriander-heavy spice mix.  It isn’t actually dry in the exact sense of the word, but it is just drier than other curries.

We also ordered various other side dishes, amongst them bhindi (okra) and some sublime tinda masala (baby pumpkins).

A deliciously fun evening all round, which ended with us going back to the Good Samaritan and things got a little fuzzy from then on.  So thanks to everyone who came along for making it such an excellent event and thanks to Helen for organising.

Typing this has made me hungry even though we had our dinner an hour or so ago!