Homemade glazed buns for Bar Boulud's Tunisienne hot dogs

Pascal Aussignac peddles his Marmite Royale, winner of festival's Best Taste award

If you wish to give this year’s Taste of London restaurant festival a miss rather than pay £24 for the right to pay top £ for small plates of food you eat standing up that’s your business. Sorry, complaints about the high admission price are now so old and tired the first ones were texted on Nokia 1100s.

This post is about what not to miss if you’re not missing Taste. The remaining sessions are this afternoon, tonight and tomorrow after.

I’m very pleased that Club Gascon’s Marmite Royale won the Best in Taste award. I hosted the world preview, if not premiere, of Pascal Aussignac’s invention at my June 11th BurgerMonday pop-up at Comptoir Gascon (photos).

Full disclosure: My four festival recommendations below are based on a limited sampling. Forget Hoovers: I’d have needed a Flymo Turbo 400 to graze all of muddy Regent’s Park.

[slider_pro id=”24″]

I had a great time at this year’s Taste (18-21 June), if not for all the same reasons as the good people at Channel 4 sales.  They were enticed by an “upmarket, aspirational consumer event” with a “strong ABC1” audience. Fearing sensory overload I mostly ignored the high managerials and low cleavages, which you can find in abundance at any happy hour near Liverpool Street Station, and instead pursued body overload, with select noshes from amongst 40 of London’s better restaurants. This you cannot do – and should not attempt to do –  in the immediate vicinity of Liverpool Street Station.

Taste fulfills its promise of providing open-air access to a wide variety of dishes from acclaimed restaurants that only the A’s within Channel 4’s coveted ABC1 audience can afford to frequent with any regularity. Most impressively, the kitchen staffs perform at a high level while serving 100 covers per hour in claustrophobic conditions. The festival appears to be a big deal for the star chefs, which makes it a big deal for the public.

Glorious Regent’s Park is no level playing field for Michelin-starred cuisine. Perceptions of foods change when consumed in a standing or walking position from plastic tableware. Fussy foods lose out to finger foods. Hot soup is almost always a bad idea; chilled soup, invariably a good one (e.g. the elegant pea velouté from Jocelyn Herland, executive chef at Alain Ducasse at the Dorchester). And flaunted luxury is in all instances a plus. Having endured endless queues, the festival foragers need to see they’ve waited for something rich.

This partly explains how chef Jean-Philippe Patruno of Quo Vadis stole the show with grilled rib of 48-day Hereford beef. This was steak and this was beautiful. Though many requested slices cut from the rib eye, Patruno preferred the portion nearer the bone, protected from the blazing heat by the rib eye’s rim of fat. “The meat slowly melts,” noted Patruno, using the sort of words that win food festivals. “It’s like a confit cooking in its own fat.” Who is going to say no to that?

The foie gras burger presented by L’Atelier de Joel Robuchon proved to be the perfect festival dish: a popular barbecue sandwich with a precious main ingredient and scrumptious accessories. Served on a brioche bun, the mini-burger was seared to a delectable crisp, with verjus-marinated roast peppers and ginger glaze providing saucy notes of condimental pungency.

Croque Gascon didn’t hide foie gras directly beneath the bun of its terrific duck burger; it shrewdly served slices of it (in terrine form) directly beside it. I may have been the only person in Regent’s Park who was less distracted by the foie than the “crazy salt” sprinkled over the duck-fat frites. If Croque doesn’t begin selling that mix of Fleur de Sel de Guérande and Piment d’Espelette in jars soon I promise that I will.

Playing the conspicuous luxury card, celebrity chef Giorgio Locatelli chose to charm his adoring audience at the Refettorio booth with a hand grater and summer truffles. Rising star Francesco Mazzei of L’Anima did the same, as if he were emulating his charismatic countryman. He scattered the truffle shavings rather generously over fettuccine with wild mushrooms.

Mazzei and I somehow got to talking about linguine vongole: instinctively he identified this as one of my weaknesses. He noted how the starch from the pasta water was required to transform the vongole sauce into an emulsione with emozione. That sounded good to me.

Mazzei and I parted with this wager: If, when I visit L’Anima, his linguine vongole is not the best in London, he pays. If I concede that it is the best, I pay double.