News and views | Graze: food and wine matching at the London Restaurant Festival

News and views

Graze: food and wine matching at the London Restaurant Festival

If you’re the sort who likes to nick food off your partner’s plate - and even off friends' on the other side of the table (mea culpa) - you’ll love the idea of Graze, this year’s new feature at the London Restaurant Festival this autumn which features six of London’s most foodie streets including Exmouth Market, Bermondsey Street, Brixton Village and Marylebone High Street.

The idea is that you buy a Graze keyring - or two - at £12.50 each or £20 for a pair - then present it for a dish and a matching drink at one of the participating restaurants which should be priced at about £6. There are also weekend passes for Soho

We road-tested four of the six in Exmouth Market including Canteen, Moro, Morito and Medcalf before we gave up, utterly stuffed. The other two are Bincho and La Porchetta.

Morito I think got the prize for the evening not just because it offered two dishes each (I'm not that greedy) but because one of them, a beetroot purée called borani (right) was just so beautiful. (The other was a bowl of deep-fried chitterlings and the wine, a rustic tempranillo). Apparently you can find the recipe in Sam and Sam Clark’s Moro East.

Next door at Moro we were offered a glass of chilled fino with a deconstructed tuna kibbe served on a lettuce leaf like the Thai dish laab (not quite so sure about that one).

Moro is also celebrating its 15th anniversary this month, believe it or not, cooking dishes from the opening menu for three weeks from 23rd July-August 12th including crab brik with harissa and lemon and wood roasted pork with patatas pobres and churrasco sauce Unfortunately I’m going to be away but I still remember being absolutely blown away by the food. It’s hard to recall how revolutionary it was then.

I’d been meaning to go to Medcalf next door for a while so it was good to give it a try - one of the objectives of Graze, I imagine. They offered a great grazing dish of bavette and chips and grilled lamb with beans (right) together with a glass of merlot.

Then back to Caravan, which I’d visited a couple of times before for breakfast but never tried in the evening, for grilled quail with sumac and Casa Lapostolle Pinot. (I note we ate a lot of meat. Maybe it was the weather which was chucking it down. It can’t be worse in October.)

Anyway you can do this for yourself once the Festival begins on October 1st (actually you can buy the keyrings now on the festival website It’s probably also worth signing up for the newsletter so you don’t miss out on some of the other events which from past experience sell out pretty quickly. Especially the ones that involve celebrity chefs.

 

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