Easter Slow Food event at the Southbank Centre

Slow Food London organise various food and drink-themed events in London (details on the website, or see their Facebook page), and last weekend they held an event for Easter at the Southbank Centre. It was basically a farmer's market, with a few talks and demonstrations in a tent to one side.

There was cheese and charcuterie...


There were dips and salads and spices...


There was paella...



There was also a wine-tasting, featuring "rare wines". Unfortunately, I had nothing with which to take notes, so I couldn't write down exactly what we tried. There was certainly a Tannat, a red from Arbois, a Favorita (possibly Italy or Corsica?) and another white, beginning with R but other than that I can't remember (it was very acidic, and basically tasted of grapefruit, so I wasn't mad about it anyway).



I caught the end of a "Spring Cheeses" tasting session too, and there were other talks throughout the weekend. All of the vendors had samples out, and most of them were happy to chat about their produce, companies and food generally. A couple of the more interesting points were a long conversation I overheard between a honey-merchant from Norfolk and a customer about colony collapse disorder, in which entire hives of bees just seem to disappear and which continues to spread, a rose petal preserve and a stall selling hemp oil, which apparently contains high levels of omega-3, -6 and -9 fatty acids in exactly the proportions the body uses them. I was somewhat dubious about the scientific basis of this last claim (surely the required ratios depend on what process exactly the acids are being used for in the body?) but the oil did have a pleasant nutty flavour. Overall, it was a cute little market to wander through if you happened to be in the area, and provided a number of options for a stand-up lunch to the passing hoards, but I wouldn't recommend traveling any great distance especially for it.