Locanda Locatelli

I enjoyed a delicious lunch at Locanda Locatelli today. It was my first visit to Giorgio's restaurant since I was much younger, when I went to make ice-creams; I can hardly remember it. However, today's meal was a great reminder of truly fantastic Italian cuisine.

I was completely blown away by the gnocchi with morel mushrooms. There will definitely be no substitute for these delicately light gnocchi, made with King Edward potatoes, with their exceptionally light and fluffy texture. Of course the morels were incredibly rich and intense, and their earthly flavour in the sauce went really well with the potato gnocchi.

For my starter, I had some burrata with grilled vegetables, and topped with roasted almonds. The burrata, which is made in a similar way to mozzarella (although is much more runny!), had a refreshing creamy taste and texture. The buttery flavour was great with the soft, grilled courgette, and onion, and crunchy roasted almonds.

I had to opt for sorbet for dessert on such a hot day, so I tried three different sorbets: apricot & passion fruit, apple, and raspberry. They were all delicious, and not too sweet. I especially like the apple, which was very subtle - the apricot & passion fruit was also lovely and exotic.

The restaurant look great as well, I especially liked the glass panels with yellow streaks curling down, which reminded me of tagliatelle pasta! The staff were really kind, and well humoured!

Chocolate Festival and Meza

I had a fun day yesterday, starting at the Chocolate Festival at the Southbank. It's on until Sunday in the square behind the Royal Festival Hall, and there's some great chocolate to taste and buy along with some interesting talks from the people behind the chocolate.

I popped along to do a quick shift behind Original Beans' stall, explaining what I knew about the origins of the bars, the rare Porcelena cocoa beans (named after its white appearance similar to that of porcelain), and the inspiring ethos - a bar plants a tree! It was great fun, and I enjoyed meeting people who knew and were interested in finding out about chocolate. Just before the event started to wind down for the evening, I popped round to have a peek at the other stalls and tried Damien Allsop's mini egg which had a delicious salty caramel filling. He's a great chocolatier who's speciality is water-based ganache, and I love his raspberry chocopop with crackling space dust!

Then, in the evening we visited The Modern Pantry Pop-up at Meza, where I enjoyed the fresh and exciting cooking of Anna Hansen. The menu was really interesting, and everything sounded sensational. I opted for the salmon sashimi to start. The organic fish was so fresh and had a lovely clean taste, and the dressing made from truffled umeboshi, which is a sour fruit, wonderfully complimented and accented the citrus yuzu (a Japanese fruit) and the texture of the crunchy flying fish roe (or tobiko) was great.

For mains I tried the roast butternut squash, tofu and leek filled inari (pouches made from an omelette-like mixture), with crispy walnuts and wild rice, and a salty miso broth. It was a very earthy dish, quite different from my starter, and it had a great rustic sense, but was also highly voluptuous, with a deep aroma and soft-hard textures.

Finally to finish I had the salted coconut tapioca with a green tea and chocolate mouse, with mango, passion fruit and a coconut wafer. I'm not completely sure why I chose this, because I'm not a great fan of green tea, but I liked the crunchy passion fruit with the sweet coconut, and the crispy wafer.

All in all a delightful day, and a delicious meal!