the white card
f&b trend
Feast For The Senses
In 2010, while trends such as comfort, home-style food and artisan produce looks set to continue, we’d like to see more outrageous, out-of-the-box and unconventional dinner parties which are fun, cheeky and charmingly irreverent. Part art, part gastronomic feast, one thing’s for certain, these outrageous dinner soirees are always a visual spectacle.
| 1. | Performa 09: Food for Thought At the opening fundraising gala dinner, for Performa 09, a three week performance art biennale in New York, 500 ticketed guests were treated to an interactive culinary experience based on the biblical book of Genesis. Wandering through the dinner venue, guests were invited to choose their own drinking glass from a staggering array of 3600 glasses on one floor, feasted on a two-ton stack of barbecued ribs drizzled with honey from dispensers hanging from the ceiling at another, and picked apples from three felled apple trees at a third. The piece de resistance? Chocolatier Jacque Torres created 7 oversized chocolate bunnies modeled after Jeff Koons' Rabbit sculpture, which party attendees were invited to hack apart with hammers. Click here for more photos |
| 2. | The glass artist cook By profession, Norwegian Tanja Saeter is a glass artist. With Heat Blow Eat, part-exhibition and part-mobile restaurant, Tanja merges her profession with another great love, food. The passionate foodie specializes on seafood cooked on still-hot glass that’s freshly-blown. Each glass bowl or plate is hand blown to a unique shape, depending on the type of produce that’s to be cooked. With temperatures reaching a scorching 900 degrees for just blown glass, the food is placed directly onto the glass, and cooked immediately. The quick, intense sear of heat imparts a clear, smoky flavor to the food, and crustaceans in particular, are favoured because of their protective shells which can withstand the fiery heat. |
| 3. | Le Fooding It could only be the French who would hold a food festival within an abandoned swimming pool. An annual underground French food festival, which is anti-haute, anti-posh, anti-pretentious about anything and everything to do with French cuisine, the theme of Le Fooding 2009 was “Les Incorrects”, translated as politically incorrect. Partying and dining with Gallic aplomb, the bottom of the Piscine Molitor swimming pool played host to a menswear show by John Galliano, a deathly and delicious array of the best French cheeses, and masked chefs cooking and pairing produce which they otherwise wouldn’t do in their restaurants, such as hare cooked in blood and topped with candied raspberries, or monkfish liver terrine with a fruit sauce. |
| 4. | Tearing down the Wall To commemorate the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, writer Caroline Hobkinson and food stylist/pastry chef Rachel Khoo took advantage of the culinary history of both sides to host an East Vs. West dinner party. Held in an apartment barely 50 meters from where the wall stood, guests at the 3-night underground restaurant stepped into a time warped space filled with old commemorative memorabilia dating back to the fall of the wall. The party for each evening was split in two, and each faction was presented with a different menu representing East or West Berlin, and each course represented a different period within those troubled times. True to communist fashion, guests from either side were allowed—and encouraged—to barter for a taste of each other’s dishes. |
Photos courtesy of Tanja Saeter & Caroline Hobkinson