REVIEW ON “TASTE OF CHRISTMAS 2012”

A three days marathon foodie event “Taste of Christmas 2012”at ExCel London has came to an end yesterday, swept away the public attention. A complex of food ingredients, products, beverages, festival decorations, kitchenware and feathered celebrity chefs such as Jamie Oliver, Ben Tish and Jun Tunaka, the event offers visitors the most authentic British Christmas experience to take home.

The hall is pretty enormous where capable for around 211 retailers alongside with Christmas workshop, Chef’s secrets and Taste theatre for chefs performing; it also provides booth restaurant in the centre for resting. The retails are quite diverse and bewildering array visitors with different selling strategy including discounting, performing, food trials and free samples to take away. Considering the survival of the restaurants in the event, food trails are mainly dairy bites and sauces. However, beverage trails is a lot more satisfying since there are loads of wine retailers showcasing in the event and the wine trials are everywhere that you are likely to get drunk within a round walk.

With all the red and green bewildering and bunches of gourmets rivaling all around, the event is actually quite organized by categorizing different type of food into areas. Here, we introduce you all the delicacies that one cannot miss in terms of the eats and drinks in the festival.

Eats: Preparing a Christmas dinner takes time for gathering ingredients, sauces and seasonings. Here you can find everything you ever need and even something you never think of. It includes a wide range of traditional Christmas gourmets such as different flavoured olive oil infancy bottles; delicate high-heel Chocolates delights; tangy cheeses aged from 13 to 38 months; lovely homemade Christmas puddings; juicy Caribbean grilled sausages and cute glittering mini cupcakes…etc. It easily takes you hours hovering in a same area figuring out what to buy not only because of the diversity of the food, but also most of them are not available on supermarket rack.

Drinks: The event is a blessing for alcoholic since almost all of the wine is offering drink trail! The wines that showcased in the event is a wide variety from European beer, red/white wine, rum, vodka and single malt whisky to Asian plum wine and Caribbean sorrel wine.  Special alcohols were also provided such as freshly banana rum with 42% alcohol for alcohol lovers and Chocolate wine for children with containing mostly chocolate. The event is considerate enough to sell a “No hangover” drinks for tipsy visitors!

The event rocked the festival not only by providing an experience of how Christmas literally should “taste” like from the showcased foods, but it also nailed on the Christmas vibe bursting interior.  With all the gourmets and surrounding full of decorations and carols, at least one thing is certain – Christmas is all around!

By Jennifer Chan