Aquasia Bar | Aquasia Restaurant at Wyndham Grand London Chelsea Harbour

BEAT THE END-OF-SUMMER BLUES AT AQUASIA BAR & RESTAURANT

Arrive at the Aquasia Bar on Thursdays between 5 – 7pm for ‘Harbour Sundowners’ happy hour and sip away at a selection of tropical cocktails and half-price tipples overlooking the yachts of the rich and famous. Alternatively, or after aperitifs, head to Aquasia Restaurant between 6 – 7.30pm to sample it’s outstanding two-course £20 dinner menu accompanied by a glass of wine.

Get happy at the bar

As well as half price wines, cocktails, spirits and beers, the weekday Harbour Sundowners also offers an exotic Weekly Cocktail Special for that something slightly different. Smokers, who haven’t let the ban affect them, can light up in peace on the terrace. Post happy hour, relax with live entertainment from 8pm, varying from Brazilian bosa nova, to classical and slow rock and enjoy the late 1am license.

Signature Aquasia cocktails include Mango Blast, the eponymous Aquasia martini, an exotic tasting kiwi cocktail as well as a Thai and a blackberry and apple martini. Alternatively try their Watermelon Cooler or the Affagatto.

Curb hunger in the restaurant

The Aquasia Restaurant is offering diners a special two-course menu, boasting a range of mouth-watering starters to whet the appetite and main courses to satisfy the stomach, served with a complimentary glass of wine. Choose from warming soups, sumptuous salads and comforting classics. Dishes include memories of the Mediterranean with Parma ham, tomato and asparagus penne drizzled with truffle oil and a hint of the Orient with a sesame glazed chicken breast served with Chinese broccoli, jasmine rice and finished with a lime leaf curry sauce.

Both the Aquasia Bar and Restaurant are situated in the Wyndham Grand London Chelsea Harbour, overlooking the tranquil marina with tables both on the terrace and indoors.

For reservations please call the restaurant, Aquasia, at Wyndham Grand London Chelsea Harbour on +44 (0)20 7823 3000. For information about Wyndham Grand London Chelsea Harbour visit www.wyndhamlondon.com

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Wyndham Grand London | Sunday Lunch In London

Wyndham Grand London – Experience The Best Sunday Lunch In The Capital On London’s Riviera

Hidden away off the King’s Road in the exclusive enclave of Chelsea Harbour lies one of London’s best kept secrets. Overlooking the stunning setting of the marina Wyndham Grand London, a discreet five star hotel beloved of businessmen and celebrities, has introduced a gastronomic Sunday lunch buffet for its gourmet guests.

Comprising unlimited house Champagne and three courses of international delicacies, Wyndham Grand London’s Sunday lunch offers guests a culinary tour including twelve different first courses and two carvery options. The extensive choice of starters changes weekly, but can include terrine of scallops and Keta Caviar, drunken prawns with hell fire relish, duck roulade with honey orange sauce or white tomato mousse with cucumber spaghetti.

Next select from classic English roasts such as rare Aberdeen Angus rib eye beef with Yorkshire pudding, chestnut stuffed duck or roast ginger and soya salmon accompanied by all the trimmings. An accompanying hot buffet also offers guests the choice of fresh pasta and vegetarian and curry dishes.

With puddings including the likes of pecan pie, white chocolate mousse with orange and Grand Marnier or passion and mango torte, many guests are lured from the live jazz to the riverside walk running adjacent to the hotel for a little light exercise to work off the excesses.

Wyndham Grand London’s Sunday lunch is available every Sunday from 12 noon for a set price of £55 per person including limitless house Champagne until the end of the main course or £45 per person excluding Champagne. Children up to the age of five pay their age, five to twelve year olds pay £12 and over 12 years it is half price.

For reservations please call the restaurant, Aquasia, at Wyndham Grand London on +44 (0)20 7823 3000. For information about Wyndham Grand London visit www.wyndhamlondon.com

About Wyndham Grand London

Wyndham Grand London is the capital’s only all-suite, five star hotel overlooking the marina in Chelsea Harbour and the river Thames. Experience the luxury of being yourself in facilities that match the excellent location. Wyndham Grand London offers 160 air-conditioned suites with sitting room, bedroom, bathroom and hallway in addition to six beautifully appointed penthouse suites, all fully-equipped for the business and leisure traveller. 14 conference rooms can accommodate up to 200 people with state-of-the-art facilities for all sizes and styles of conventions. All day sustenance is provided by Aquasia Restaurant, Bar and Terrace. For the energetic there is a 17 metre indoor pool and fitness centre in addition to treatment rooms. For the visitor to London, Wyndham London represents a remarkable marriage of location and facilities.

For further information on Wyndham Hotels & Resorts please visit www.wyndham.com

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AFTERNOON TEA AT GROSVENOR HOUSE | English Afternoon Teas in London

AFTERNOON TEA AT GROSVENOR HOUSE – A BRITISH TRADITION

“A proper Tea is much nicer than a very nearly Tea” – A.A. Milne

Grosvenor House, London’s largest five star hotel, currently undergoing a multi-million pound restoration, has launched a new concept in afternoon tea in its newly revealed Park Room.

Overlooking Hyde Park, the Park Room offers welcome respite from the bustling West End. Its new afternoon tea menu is designed to appeal to a wide audience and features the traditional afternoon tea menu in addition to an a la carte option allowing guests to choose exactly what they want.

Highlights include old fashioned favourites including freshly baked scones and hot toasted crumpets with butter and comb honey. For those in search of a more exotic alternative, Moroccan tea and Turkish coffee will be accompanied by Medjool dates, Barazec biscuits and Baklava.

Fresh, traceable produce will be used throughout the menu including oak smoked salmon from the Hebrides, free range eggs and organic Devonshire farmhouse clotted cream. Plain and raisin buttermilk scones will be home made in the Grosvenor House kitchens and accompanied by Boddington’s strawberry jam. Loose leaf teas will come from Jackson’s of Piccadilly.

Children will be enchanted by a specially created “Grover” tea time menu including tropical fruit salad, homemade bite size sponge cakes, a choice of ice cream and biscuits. Named after the hotel’s eponymous British Bulldog, children will also be given their own cuddly Grover to take home.

In addition to afternoon tea, the Park Room will offer light breakfasts including fresh fruit and warm, freshly baked croissants and pastries. Homemade soup, salads and sandwiches will be offered over lunchtime and in the evening, canapés and Champagne will precede dinner whilst digestifs and savouries will follow until the early hours.

The Park Room at Grosvenor House will be open from 7am to 2am. For reservations or further information call +44 (0) 207 399 8452 visit www.grosvenor-house.co.uk

Prices for afternoon tea start from £9.50.

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SLOE GIN WINS GOLD AWARD | SLOE Motion DOES IT!

SLOE GIN WINS GOLD AWARD | SLOE Motion DOES IT!

While the sloe berry may be too bitter for the taste buds of British birds, that’s good news for us humans. A small North Yorkshire based business has been busily harvesting sloes from the local hedgerows to create a range of mouth-watering sloe based products, among them an award-winning sloe gin.

SLOE Gin, SLOE Whisky, SLOE Vodka, SLOE Chutney and SLOE Gin Belgian

A slurp of sloe gin has long been known to lift the spirits and warm the heart, and this latest offering from SLOE Motion has just been awarded Gold in the “Taste of Britain Awards” Best Drink category.

Having swept aside strong competition from all over the country, SLOE Motion’s glorious ruby-rich coloured SLOE gin could make an almost-forgotten British drinking tradition popular once again.

Like many a burgeoning business these days, it is a truly home-grown enterprise. The sloe berries come from blackthorn bushes in the hedgerows around Malton, North Yorkshire, from other farms in the area and from other counties. The gin comes from a small traditional distillery in London, where it is made to recipes that have come down through generations.


The SLOE gin is made in the traditional way, with the fruit steeped in gin and sugar and left to mature. “I make it the same way as my father has done for years, just produced on a bigger scale,” says Jonathan Curtoys, owner of SLOE Motion. Like good home-made SLOE gin SLOE Motion’s is a pale, almost rosé colour because nothing else is added.

The high concentration of fruit to gin results in a sweet and fruity liqueur, with a dry finish from the gin, but its unique flavour is quite unlike the gin that is used to make it. “Drunk neat it certainly warms you on a winter’s day; you can feel it going down like liquid central heating,” says Curtoys. “But we also have a whole range of fantastic cocktail ideas for all weathers.”

This quintessential English countryman’s tipple is now bang up-to-date as one of the most popular cocktail mixers. Here’s a few ideas to try:

The Charlie Chaplin – one measure each of Apricot Brandy, SLOE Gin and lemon juice, over ice in a brandy glass.

The Futurity – one measure each of sweet Vermouth and SLOE Gin, shaken in a cocktail mixer half filled with ice. Strain into a cocktail glass and serve, adding two dashes of Angostura bitters.

The Pink Ginger – the perfect summer refresher – in a chilled hi-ball glass add one third SLOE gin to two thirds traditional ginger beer and crushed ice. Add a generous squeeze of lime around the rim and place the spent lime in the glass.

The SLOE Royale – pour half a measure of SLOE gin into a champagne flute and top up with champagne or sparkling wine. Perfect for special occasions.

Though the sloe berry is best associated with gin, it is a wild relative of the plum and the damson and can be used in a number of culinary ways. “We have developed the SLOE Motion range to include a unique SLOE Whisky together with SLOE Vodka, SLOE Chutney and SLOE Gin Belgian Chocolate Truffles,” says Curtoys. “And we have plenty more ideas!”

Whisky lovers should try the SLOE Whisky neat, or for a delicious cocktail try The Pink Whisker – as above, in a chilled hi-ball glass add one third SLOE whisky to two thirds traditional ginger beer and crushed ice. Add a generous squeeze of lime around the rim and place the spent lime in the glass.

The possibilities with SLOE Vodka are numerous and present many opportunities for experimentation and fun…

The Taste of Britain Awards, run by The Daily Telegraph in association with Sainsbury’s, was established last year ‘to highlight and celebrate all things great and good from within the Great British Food Industry’. The voting panel is made up of food industry experts from DEFRA (Department of Environment, Food & Rural Affairs), the Institute of Grocery Distributors and market development consultancy Food from Britain, as well as Sainsbury’s and The Daily Telegraph.

The entrants were judged not only on the flavour and quality of their product, but on their innovation, business acumen, environmental record and benefits to the local economy. Another important factor was the “Britishness” of their product and their ability to take on an ambassadorial role for their region or category.

SLOE Motion has already won the 2007 Yorkshire Post Readers Award for its SLOE gin, voted for by the customers of Harvey Nichols Foodmarket, and now it’s struck Gold in the “Taste of Britain Awards”. This is clearly one to watch, or taste maybe.

And SLOE Motion is surely the answer to every Christmas or birthday shopper’s ‘what-to-buy’ nightmare – SLOE Gin, SLOE Whisky, SLOE Vodka, SLOE Chutney and SLOE Gin Belgian Chocolate Truffles, can be delivered to your door, singly or in any combination, and all beautifully packaged in smart black boxes.

SLOE Motion products can be purchased from
http://www.sloemotion.com
or by calling 0844 800 1911.

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Alain Ducasse at The Dorchester | Head Chef Nicola Canuti

Alain Ducasse at The Dorchester

This mid-November opening is set to be one of the most glittering events in the London restaurant calendar. The glamorous 80 seater will be located in a light elegant room with a contemporary design and will overlook Park Lane and Hyde Park.

The head chef is Italian born Nicola Canuti, but he will be cooking modern French dishes designed and created by Alain Ducasse. Nicola has previously worked for Ducasse and also Marco Pierre White. He was head chef of the award-winning Spoon restaurant in Mauritius. Head pastry chef is Angelo Ercolano, most recently at Spoon at Sanderson in London. He has also supervised pastry in other prestigious restaurants and hotels including the Grosvenor House in London.

The kitchen brigade will interpret Alain’s signature cuisine using a combination of fine French and British seasonal ingredients. “I rely on my executive chefs to translate my cuisine, and at the Dorchester I am blessed with a particularly gifted and capable brigade” explained Ducasse, who continued: “matched by the finesse of the front of house team, these key staff will be responsible for making Alain Ducasse at the Dorchester as perfect as possible every single day”.

Reservations on 020 7629 8866

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Le Café Anglais 8 Porchester Gardens W2 | Rowley Leigh and Charlie McVeigh

Le Café Anglais 8 Porchester Gardens W2

This exciting new restaurant is scheduled to open on November the fifth.

It is located high above the rooftops of West London with views across Queensway to Hyde Park. It is the brainchild of Rowley Leigh and Charlie McVeigh and it’s named after the greatest Parisian restaurant of the 19th-century. In the film Babette’s Feast the heroine learnt her trade at the café Anglais where many classic dishes were first invented. The new restaurant will have an open kitchen displaying a giant rotisserie which customers can watch as their chickens, partridges and joints of beef turn slowly.

The extensive menu will contain many classic dishes and ingredients will be sourced with Rowley’s customary care and passion for quality. There will be a lunchtime set menu attractively priced at £12 50 for two courses and every evening there will be a special roast such as goose with apple sauce. Rowley Leigh is one of our most respected and thoughtful cookery writers. He was head chef for 20 years at Kensington Place after having worked for the Roux brothers at the Gavroche. He has a regular column in the Financial Times on Saturday which I always make a point of reading.

Clifford Mould October 2007

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Hibiscus Restaurant London | Chef Claude Bosi

Hibiscus Restaurant London | Chef Claude Bosi

Hibiscus comes to London

Another exciting event will be the opening on the 24th of October of Hibiscus which is being moved from its seven year home in Ludlow, Shropshire, to central London by chef Claude Bosi and his wife Claire. Will Claude be able to bring his two Michelin stars to the new restaurant located at 29 Maddox St, W1, we wonder? To achieve this goal, Bosi aims to bring his entire kitchen brigade down to London. The site used to be an office building and has undergone a full renovation into a forty five seat dining room and an 18 seat private dining room on the lower level. The full three course a la carte menu is £49.50 and there is a shorter set price lunch menu at £25 for three courses.

The culinary style is classical with a few modern twists. For instance: Savoury ice cream of foie gras with a warm emulsion of brioche and balsamic caramel; Ravioli of langoustines, onion and cinnamon, Granny Smith salad; Hereford suckling pig in two services; Sea bass stuffed with wild mushrooms, creamed chestnut, and cardamom oil; Hibiscus tart au chocolat with Indonesian basil ice cream; Cinnamon millefeuille with dried fig ice cream and crushed figs.

There will be an extensive wine list concentrating mainly on France but with many New World wines; prices start at £16 50 with 16 wines offered by the glass and plenty of half bottles.

The couple are keeping a foothold in Shropshire with their pub the Bell Inn in Yarpole.

The reservation number of Hibiscus London will be 020 7629 2999

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Hereford Road Restaurant Review, Notting Hill, London

Hereford Road Restaurant Review, Notting Hill, London

Hereford Road Restaurant in Notting Hill opened on Thursday 4th October.

Tom Pemberton, former head chef of St John Bread and Wine, will use the best nationally sourced, seasonal produce, placing the provenance of not only meat and fish but also vegetables at the very centre of the endeavour.

Both the food and wine are claimed to be of excellent value and quality. The aim is to champion well sourced British food at accessible prices. The original wine list will offer a number of wines by the glass and also carafe. Special emphasis will be placed on the high quality of house wines.

The simplicity, honesty and quality of the food are reflected through the restaurant with its comfortable and straightforward design. An emphasis on seasonality is also echoed in the design of this 70 cover establishment. It is light and airy in the summertime with its butcher’s window open on to the street, yet inviting in the winter – the open kitchen at the front of the restaurant creating a warm and intimate setting.

HEREFORD ROAD 3 Hereford Road, Off Westbourne Grove, London. W2
020 7727 1144 www.herefordroad.org

Clifford Mould October 2007

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Texture Restaurant | Aggi Sverrisson and Xavier Rousset at 34 Portman Square

Texture Restaurant | Aggi Sverrisson and Xavier Rousset at 34 Portman Square

Aggi Sverrisson and Xavier Rousset were head chef and head sommelier respectively under Raymond Blanc at Le Manoir. It was there that they created their vision for a new restaurant where food and wine would have equal importance: the result is TEXTURE, which launched at the end of September and looks set to be a real Mecca for out and out foodies.

They confidently claim that the food will be outstanding – simple yet beautiful, but also light, healthy and with an extraordinary blend of flavours. Early reports suggest that Texture is taking the challenge directly to Heston Blumenthal of the Fat Duck.

Aggi and Xavier are without doubt a most exciting and talented duo. I believe it is the first time that a top sommelier has joined forces with a head chef in a 50:50 partnership. Xavier has obviously had a lot of fun sourcing the majority of wines from interesting and/or small producers. So here are a few lunch menu items to whet your foodie appetites:

Alsace Bacon and Ambrose Hen Egg Slow poached, crispy, watercress, tomato relish ***
Late Summer Vegetable Salad Cooked, raw, salad leaves *** Icelandic Cod Brandade, tapenade, chorizo, crispy bread ??? Cornish Skate Wing Pan-fried, orange, beetroot, caper dressing *** Black-leg Chicken Roasted leg, pearl barley, broken Ambrose hen egg *** Mediterranean Tuna Tartare, Asian flavours *** Summerset (sic) Lamb 24hour cooked shoulder, herb fregula, roasting jus *** Lancashire Old Spot Pig Crispy belly, spiced baby cabbage, turnips, cooking juices. All Dishes £8.50 each – Available at lunch time only

Texture – 34 Portman Square W1 T: 020 7224 0028

www.texture-restaurant.co.uk

Clifford Mould October 2007

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Food | The History of Taste | Paul Freedman

Food ~ The History of Taste ~ Written by leading food historians in England, Belgium, France, Germany, Canada and the USA ~ Edited by Paul Freedman

This book is the first to apply the discoveries of the new generation of food historians worldwide to the unashamedly romantic appeal of the subject: to the culinary accomplishments of diverse civilizations, past and present, and to the pleasures of dining. The result is truly a history of taste: our most elevated, elegant and pleasurable thoughts about food – ingredients, preparation, presentation – since prehistory.

Why did Europeans, whose cuisine had been highly spiced since the Roman Empire, completely lose their love of spice since the nineteenth century? How did the introduction of coffee and chocolate change European habits and international commerce? What were the origins of the subtle, spohisticated and varied food customs created in the Arabian desert? How did France’s grand cuisine take over the world? When and where did restaurants originate? And what should we make of the glorious eclecticism of today’s taste?

Here you will find Zhang Dai’s lOvingly recorded memories of the crabs, clams and junket enjoyed in china before the fall of the ming; the first celebrity chefs in the classical world; how sugar from the West Indies profoundly changed European taste; meals recalled by proust in detail – far more interesting than the mere madeleine; and how two journalists discovered nouvelle cuisine.

This book is unique in that it is organised by what people thought was good and how food was part of distinctive societies. It is profusely illustrated with works of art that can truly be called mouth-watering. From beginning to end these pages provide an enthralling and richly illustrated story of one of the most vital clues not just to what keeps us alive, but to what makes us feel alive.

Food ~ The History of Taste ~ Written by leading food historians in England, Belgium, France, Germany, Canada and the USA.

Food: The History of Taste (Hardcover)
by Paul Freedman (Editor)

Hardcover: 368 pages
Publisher: Thames & Hudson Ltd (5 Nov 2007)
Language English
ISBN-10: 0500251355
ISBN-13: 978-0500251355

Paul Freedman is Professor of Historv at Yale and a former Chairman of the Department of History there

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