Small plate dining in the docklands

Taste Club wraps up Taste of Christmas

DECEMBER'S biggest pop-up wasn't in some shabby chic Dalston boho magnet, but ExCel in London's Docklands, a javelin throw from the rapidly growing Olympics site.

Taste's flagship, Taste of London in Regent's Park, is such an institution now that it's worth remembering the whole enterprise is only six years old. Its Christmas sibling, Taste of Christmas, is smaller, further east and runs heavily into winter. But it's also the last major food and drinks event before Christmas and the new year, and an excellent opportunity for restaurants braced for a difficult month in January to charm the public - and for London to stock its larders for festive feasting.

Friday menu
Breakfast
Potted shrimp
Elevenses
Ham hock with colcannon and parsley sauce
Lunch
Siberian Pelmieni
Wild boar vindaloo
Oysters Rockefeller
Sautéed foie gras 'popcorn'
High tea
Sugar-cured prawns and scrambled eggs

We've arrived at ExCel, and already Benares's Atul Kochhar was cooking a chicken livers on toast with lime, mushroom and coriander at the Taste Theatre: "A perfect breakfast with a cup of tea, no milk", according to MC and Taste Club wine afficionado, Olly Smith. With breakfast in mind, we considered Club Gascon's Gascon mess (see the recipe), purely on the basis of Pascal Aussignac's dish featuring prunes. And these weren't the typically stewed remnants Brits force down for their restorative effects, either, but the Ente or Agen plum from Tours - a large damson that the French have rightly elevated. But with foie gras also on their menu, a speciality of Gascony and the Club, so we decided to return later and moved on to St Pancras Grand - the modern Brit at the Eurostar terminal that's bringing back a bit of 'age of steam' glamour to the gare. The potted shrimp was a little too cold, and so quite bland - we should have waited for it to warm up - but the shrimps were firm and fresh, and the pickles sweetly mingled with mustard seeds. We followed with the ham hock and colcannon; a great hunk of gelatinous, gamey hock, but the colcannon lacked cabbage - or if it was there, we missed it - surely a vital component?

In the Peugeot kitchen - home to cars, and appropriately, top quality pepper mills - Valentina Harris is taking the Philips Robust Collection through its paces; cooking croquembouche, stuffing for a duck ballotine and chocolate truffles.

Hunger piqued, we looked at Baltic, a Polish/Eastern European in Southwark with requisite vodka bar and food that punched above its already significant weight. The Siberian pelmieni steamed dumplings - a sort of veal and pork ravioli cum northern Chinese dumpling with toasted breadcrumbs and chives - were a garlicky riposte to sniggers about food east of Berlin. Incredibly good.

Trishna is billed as a specialist in the cuisine of Mumbai as well as seafood, but we managed neither with the (Goan) wild boar vindaloo and pao bread, curious about the exotic protein, though the vindaloo is so thoroughly spiced, the meat - as long as it's mildly fatty and tender enough to convey the curry - doesn't get much of a role in the flavour stakes. Not sure if it would have been identified as boar in a blind-tasting - it could have been the more traditional lamb. Asking what the pao constituted, the answer was enigmatic: "It's not normal bread, they put butter inside." In fact, it's a Portuguese sweet bread made with milk and sugar, another nod to Goa. And it wasn't a bad medium for mopping up the sauce, either.

Drawn to foods named after robber barons, we headed for Bentley's Oyster Bar & Grill and the oysters Rockefeller (see the recipe). Lovely things, too. A gob of briney shellfish in a rich (get it?) spinach and tarragon buttered sauce. Filippo Salamone, Bentley's head oyster man was there, but not too sure he shucked ours - there were shell fragments throughout. Book a Taste Club table at Bentley's.

On our final turn for lunch we returned to Club Gascon. Pascal was signing his new book and inviting punters to 'guess the number of meringues' in a pyramid of egg whites - a peculiarly French method of judging punters' mathematical abilities. The eccentrically named sautéed foie gras popcorn shared the menu with the above-named mess and a roasted duck with pumpkin and papaya purée. The foie gras was incredibly creamy, though quite grainy, and the few pieces of otherwise conventional popcorn and a baby corn were incongruous: all the seriousness of this cordon bleu star ingredient was (ironically?) deflated by their addition, but we're not sure the kitchen quite pulled the apparent humour off. Incredible value for the delicious foie gras, nonetheless. Book a Taste Club table at Club Gascon.

As if it were channelling a little of sunny down under, ordering at The Modern Pantry was slow and the staff a bit fabulous. But all was forgiven with the scrambled eggs with smoked sambal chilli and sugar-cured prawns - a Friday highlight. Canadian-born, New Zealand raised, London trained Anna Hansen has feet in modern British and French traditions, with an antipodean nod to southeast Asia - and this dish crossed the right borders with perfect eggs, a nutty, fishy smoked sambal and prawns dappled with fresh coriander and mild green chillis in a way that evoked Sydney as well as Singapore, and in the best possible way. Lovely typeset printed postcards of the recipe were on hand, too.

Saturday menu
(Christmas) Brunch
Brussels sprouts croquettes with truffled caviar
Venison mince pie with parsnip and chocolate whip
Christmas pudding 'cigar' with cinnamon sugar and mince pie ice cream
Lunch
Crab and potato cake with lime leaf, ginger and cranberry chutney
Masala Welsh lamb cutlet with green pepper pulao
Carrot fudge
Last hurrah
Savoury custard with shaved truffles in a duck egg
'Dolada' soup
'New' spaghetti carbonara

Day two and champing at the bit, we headed straight to Menu from Waitrose to speak to executive chef, Neil Nugent, who took us through the offerings. The Brussels sprouts croquette with slightly truffled 'caviar' - a new product that doesn't involve fish roe, but herring, a sustainable alternative - wasn't a bad early start. A Victorian recipe for the mince pie with spiced fruit and venison ('mince pies' once really contained mince) was a nice change to the ghastly little packaged things we put up with every December; the spicy combination of meat and peel was vaguely reminiscent of the much smaller, barrel-shaped Pézenas pie, a delicious little Languedoc specialty claiming heredity from Clive of India's time there, his Indian cook and spiced mutton pies. Two Christmas pudding cigars were rolled out of fine, lacy pastry originating in Tunisia called feuilles de brick; hard to get hold of outside France and North Africa, we've been assured that it's now available at Waitrose.

Jean-Christophe Novelli at the Taste Theatre - Olly Smith bounds on stage "he rocks, he's awesome, hurrah". On the menu: a flexible aubergine and tomato medley that can be directed towards fish, prawns, scallops or chicken. Later, Allegra McEvedy took the crowd through what looked like best end of neck veal chops, as well as the ethics of consuming the meat (male calves born to milking cows can't be used in the dairy industry).

Next stop, Michelin starred Tamarind, and executive chef Alfred Prasad. His immaculate crab cake starter combined earthy spices with a sweet-sour balance of cranberry chutney (see the recipe here), while his masala Welsh lamb cutlet and green pepper pulao (rice pilaf) added a rich, tender something to chew on. The pudding - carrot fudge with crumbled pistachio and strawberries - was like a deconstructed besan barfi; a fulfilling caramelised coda. Book a Taste Club table at Tamarind.

We passed wistfully by the meaty cornucopia that is Allens of Mayfair, with a whole lamb broken down on the butcher's block and an English suckling pig for 140 quid amongst the game and Christmas gooses. Surely a better buy - if you have the cooking space - than that bland, wont to dry out, stateside import, turkey?

Dolada in Mayfair is Riccardo De Prà's second family restaurant. The first - a culmination of generations in the restaurant trade - overlooks stunning mountain scenery an hour from Venice and the Dolomites and appears in guides Michelin and Gault Millau. Our first dish was an amuse-gueule of savoury custard cooked with nero pregiato (Périgord) truffles and topped with raw, shaved uncinato truffles and served in a duck egg. De Prà was sponsored by supplier A. Romani - hence the embarrassment of fungus.

Next, De Prà brought out Dolada's signature soup - an elegant looking concoction of lamon beans, barley, tomato and basil (see the recipe here). The beans hail from Veneto's 1500m high altitude plains, where prized potatoes and chestnuts are also cultivated.

Dolada's kitchen prepares its own charcuterie and cheeses, and the fabulous spaghetti carbonara featured its guanciale - bacon from pork cheek rather than back or belly. Mixing the egg and Pecorino through the soft, fresh egg spaghetti (though dried has been the norm for more than 50 years) and pepper - a visual cue to the dish's name, 'carbon', according to the chef - it felt like all the fripperies of contemporary cooking had melted away; a genuine pleasure and perfect way to end our festive feasting.