Global food bites

Celebrity waiters, sky high prices - and a taste of India.

Apsleys — a Heinz Beck Restaurant — is offering a tasting menu in November and December pairing the German chef’s Italian food with the popular tipple Dom Perignon. The nine-course meal starts with nero scallops and Oenotheque 1995, works its way through lamb crepinette with Oenotheque 1969 and ends with “white dream” (the mind boggles) with Chateau d’Yquem 1 er Grand Cru Classe, Sauternes 1999.

The menu at the London eatery is offered for parties of four to eight people, must be booked 48 hours in advance and costs $1,558 per person. Now imagine a cap of, say, £2,000 on bonuses. It might work if you withhold the 12.5 percent service charge, drink tap water and go home on public transport.

 

Sketch will open a pop-up cafe at the Royal Academy for two months from December 3, 2009, in conjunction with the exhibition, Earth: Art of a Changing World. Pierre Gagnaire’s menu will be green. No, not Brussels sprouts and cabbage, but low in food miles. There will be croissants, pain au chocolat and muffins for breakfast; soups, pates, salads, oysters and crepes for the rest of the day, with afternoon tea and a takeaway counter. Some of the seating will be outdoors and diners can keep warm under hand-knitted rugs made with recycled wool. Pommery Champagne has produced a limited-edition Earth Champagne for the occasion.

Vineet Bhatia is taking his modern Indian food — lobster with cocoa, chocolate samosas -— back home to India. The owner of Rasoi, Vineet Bhatia in London said he will open one venue at the Oakwood Premier, Mumbai, in November, another at the Oberoi hotel in Mumbai, in December, and a third at a new Oberoi in New Delhi next July. “I grew up in Bombay and I would walk past the Oberoi when it opened,” the chef said in a telephone interview from Geneva, where he has a restaurant at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel. “In 1988, after college, I went to work there for five years, so to go back and run the restaurant, it’s a dream come true.”

The Ubon site at Canary Wharf has been taken over by Inc Group, which will turn it into a modern European restaurant called Battery. The opening is planned for December. Inc operates the Attic cocktail bar at the Pan Peninsula building and plans a ground-floor eatery there called Tompkins.

StreetSmart started its two-month campaign to raise money for the homeless with a party at Quintessentially Soho at the House of St Barnabas, an amazing venue (with a chapel) that is currently a pop-up private members’ club. Diners are being invited to add a £1 donation to their bills. I ran into a woman called the Cookie Girl, wearing a mini-dress and thigh-high socks, who’s offering cake-making classes. As Caprice says on the Web site, “These cookies are irresistible.”

John Campbell, who held two Michelin stars at the Vineyard at Stockcross, will be preparing dinner in London on November 30, 2009 for Tiffing, a supper-and-drinks club that holds events at secret locations. Chefs lined up for the coming months include Mark Hix, David Thompson of Nahm and chocolate maker Damian Allsop. Click on www.tiffing.co.uk for more information.

Almeida is offering a £26.50 dinner or Sunday lunch with a glass of Piper-Heidsieck for the festive season.

Jason Leonard and fellow players Martin Offiah, Lee Mears and Nick Easter raised £15,000 for the rugby charity Wooden Spoon in a cook-off at Cinnamon Kitchen. Chef Vivek Singh helped the stars to prepare Indian dishes that were judged by diners, with a little help from a panel of which I was a member.

Meat & Wine Co in Westfield celebrates its first birthday with an event where celebrities such as Nikki Grahame and Aisleyne Horgan-Wallace of Big Brother wait on the tables. Proceeds go to the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund. Expect heartbreaking tales and a few tears — if you fail to recognise your waitress.