Week forty-three

There is no doubt about it: I live to eat.  How sad life is otherwise?  I pity those that don't take the most obscene pleasure in eating.  Tasting, chewing, licking, crunching, biting, smelling - its all insanely good. I would say that the majority of my life revolves around food.  Is that bad?  It probably is since I do have a constant battle with myself when it comes to food - one half of me is desperately wanting to lose the flab from my tummy and the other half, well the other half doesn't care about it for the few seconds of pure pleasure the forkful of glorious ingredients gives me.

I think real lovers of food are the ones that have almost trained themselves to like certain foods that they once hated.  They say you can teach yourself to like foods as you get older and your palate becomes more sophisticated - I would definitely say thats true of avocado and fish for me.  Unfortunately, it will never be the case with olives and red wine.  Shame really, but the point is I have reached a place where I love to try new foods and get excited by all the weird and wonderful things that can now be done with it.  Food is no longer food - its art.

So when I got invited to the second annual Experimental Food Society Spectacular, it was the icing on the cake.  It was founded by Alexa Perrin, who wanted to bring together the most talented culinary creatives around and showcase their endless gourmet skills.  Her members include jelly mongers, cake sculptors, sugarcraft artists, dining conceptualists and many more.  The annual spectacular  showcases the best of what these people can do, where they hope to surprise and delight with their wildly unique and creative ways of presenting food.

So my fellow foodie, Steph and I arrived at the Truman Brewery hungry and intrigued by what to expect from the 3 separate buildings that were to house this delectable affair.  The first, was wonderful and just what I expected; interesting concoctions, impressive structures and tasty treats. What first caught our eyes was the most extraordinary piece of the day, the remarkable curly wurly Eiffel Tower by food modeller, Paul Baker.  The child in me wanted to swipe at it furiously whereas the adult in me wanted to, swipe at it furiously and then shove it in my mouth......

The charming Paul Wayne Gregory was the next to draw me in with his incredibly long sparkly eye-lashes. He is a chocolatier that has spent the last 5 years creating 12 separate flavours of chocolates, of which every one has won an award. Ranging from passion fruit, vanilla, raspberry and space dust they form the pure indulgence box, which you can buy in Harvey Nichols.  I got to try the passion fruit one, which I told Paul was better than the passion fruit chocolates I'd had at Claridges.  He was happy with that.

Then, there were lots of cakes everywhere, some hanging from pieces of string, others made out of peas and courgettes, some made into houses, birds and magic 8 balls.  All, rather beautiful and extraordinary.

The problem for me, was all of these fantastic displays were in the same room, with a lot of thought taken over them, but then I went to the other two halls and compared to the first, they seemed less impressive and a bit of a disappointment.  There was very little to try in the way of food samples, nothing exceptional to look at and a few things that just seemed very incoherent at this otherwise inspiring exhibition.  I couldn't muster much enthusiasm for a table of vintage handbags filled with tea, or another with a strange contraption that brews ice coffee in 6 hours.

Perhaps I was a little distracted by the awkwardly out of place, nymph-like contemporary dancers running around like they were in the film Stealing Beauty.  They sprinted through the crowded rooms, grabbed each other and gazed longingly at each other, while crouching on the floor or holding onto pillars.  They were just a hindrance as supposed to a contemplative addition.

There were a few other things worthy of mention, such as a company called What Took You So Long,  that was extolling the virtues of Camel Milk.  Apparently, its low in fat, high in vitamin C and reduces cholestoral.  However, on the basis of its chocolate we were able to try that contains the milk, I can safely say it tasted horrible.   It didn't taste like decent chocolate at all, it reminded me a lot of South America chocolate that is quite bland, hard and fake-tasting.

The Alchemist's Dream is the work of a Ruth Elizabeth Ball, a chemistry graduate that produces handmade liqueurs.  She blends all sort of ingredients together and will come up with any combination of liqueur you like. Her current batch ranges from Juniper, Lavender Rose, Coffee, Green Cardamom and Szechuan pepper.  They weren't really my thing but its very clever indeed and they looked pretty.

 

Mertle's Menus brought a little bit of wit and charm to the final room.  Mertle is a performance artist whose current project is all about reclaiming our mouths.  She told me that our mouths are subject to a lifetime of prim and delicate behaviour as there is a bit of a cultural taboo around eating in public and in front of cameras.  Consequently, her food themed game involved visitors choosing some snacks to munch on, while Mertle photographed each one in their masticating glory for an online gallery. 

I'm sorry that I was a little disappointed with the Experimental Food Society; I think my expectations were too high.  Clearly, a lot of the work that these guys do is utterly fabulous but in the end I felt that there was a little too much focus on the first room and the exhibitors in other two were just a tad neglected.  There definitely needed to be a lot more in the way of tasting too.  Yes of course, a lot of the stands were just incredible displays and works of foody art but I think that there should have been a more equal balance between what was visually striking and what was mouthwateringly fascinating. 

I hope that the exhibit next year is organised with a little more thought and excitement as it has the potential to be absolutely magnificent.  They are after all, only in their second year. You can find out all the details here. 

This week I'm off on a Zombie chase.  Well, I'm not doing the chasing, more like fleeing from the blood-sucking, infection-riddled horrors.  Happy Halloween.