Tipped

Night of the Living Foam

January 20, 2008

Here’s what happened. A friend of mine and fellow foodie in training was in town for the week and last minute we decided to get together for a quick bit. I’m trying to get through my book of London’s Coolest Restaurants and Tom Aiken’s was one of the places I’ve been meaning to try but just haven’t gotten around to it. Like a complete amateur, I read “French” and assumed that what I love about that country’s food would apply to this place: simple but elegant. Wow, was I wrong.

I can only describe our five hour… yes FIVE… as a full on food mugging. And not even a, “this dinner was so amazing I want to eat everything” assault, but a “please make it stop” culinary crime. Be forewarned people: there is no option of a la carte Tom Aiken’s. The choices are something like three, five, or thirty five courses. And even though we went for the lightest option we were still forced into a meal that lasted longer than my last relationship.

I knew there would be no steak frites in my future when the night started with a first tasting (and these continued to arrive at slow intervals between meals), presented on a dumpling spoon, holding a combination of foie gras, quail egg, caviar, wheat grass air, and chestnut foam. This was delivered by our tasting waiter (and we counted about eight people servicing our table that evening) who recited the ingredients with all passion of a filibuster reading the dictionary.

And the foam…. Let’s just say that it would continue to terrorize us throughout dinner by appearing on every dish we ordered. No joke, it was like a zombie. It even made an unannounced guest appearance on one of the desserts.

And I’ll leave you with the final insult: smoothies (read MORE FOAM) served in various beakers and test tubes after dessert. I feel that the choice of presentation was some sort of sick joke to prove that Tom was really just messing with us and that it had all been some horrible science experiment gone awry.