The most scintillating dining experience you will encounter this Christmas season and in the coming months is undoubtedly Dinner Time Story, a pop-up, multi-sensory tasting feast taking place in the ultra-hip venue that is TT liquor in Shoreditch. The concept involves using 3D projection to tell the story of Le Petit Chef as he follows the footsteps of Marco Polo and explores the fabulous spices and flavours in the journey from Europe to Asia.
The talented team behind this creation is Skullmapping from Belgium and you can see plenty of potential for this technology to be developed further to enhance the dining experience. A youtube video of their work for Dinner Time Story has gone viral and has been viewed over six million times.
What of the food you might wonder? It was surprisingly thrilling, being created by the catering company, Sainlo Events who are used to creating exquisite food with immaculate presentation. Most of the dishes worked really well and matched perfectly with the animation, which is remarkable when you are working with a pop-up kitchen without the comfort of all your gadgets from a fully functioning restaurant kitchen.
The amuse bouche course was one of the most entertaining I’ve ever had and not just because of the truffle goat’s cheese and slow roasted tomato and red mullet with a white polenta tomato fondue but the jaw-dropping seascape presented on our dining table with the illusion of fish ‘jumping’ out from the ocean.
We then went on a journey with Arabic and Indian courses which came with matching cocktails for 5 of the 6 courses. The crockery used to serve the dishes were equally inventive. For the Indian courses, we got presented our dishes in jewellery boxes. The refreshing pineapple cobbler matched wonderfully with the butter Indian chicken served with a mini poppadum as well as the cauliflower pannacotta with a gobi aloo tartar.
The palate cleansing course was pure theatre and involved pouring tea into some dry ice, so that smoke was billowing out from the pink grapefruit and lychee sorbet.
The main course was a choice of caramelised honey and ginger duck, miso cod or Szechuan tofu. The cod and prawn was chunky and not overcooked although it could have done with more sauce and general miso taste.
Dessert ended with a ‘firework’ display and a celebration of Chinese culture with a clever reworking of the crème brûlée dessert using a creamy rice pudding with saffron.
With only public bookings on Wednesdays and Fridays until February, this is going to sell out very soon, so make sure you check out their website right away.
baldwin@townfish.com