The Taste of Summer

Sorry for the unannounced posting drought, it has been one of those periods where lots of things have been on top of each other. Because I only intended this site to have new content when there is something to talk about, or something I think deserves more attention, I’ve not prepared any posts in advance for such periods.

Taste of London Food Festival in Regents Park

Anyway in amongst weddings and other social occasions, I managed to slip along to the Taste of London food festival in Regents Park, which is an annual event sponsored by British Airways.

Within the Taste of London site there were actually 3 dedicated BA sections this year, a British Airways dining experience, and a BA lounge pavilion with a Executive Club lounge (Gold and Silver card holders, not OneWorld equivalents), and a BA corporate guest sections, drinks including Champagne along with canapes available.

Taste of London BA Lounge

Guests could also put enter their details on a form for a daily draw to win a pair of BA Club World tickets to Los Angeles.

It should be noted that London is an international city, Taste of London attracts some international guests and BA most certainly has many valuable international customers. While the person who designed the ‘top half’ of the competition entry form clearly catered for this, it is a pity the person who wrote the T&C didn’t:

BA Taste of London Competition Entry Form

BA Taste of London Competition Entry Form

This is quite ridiculously restrictive T&C, the competition is only open to entry from the ToL festival, so people would need to be physically located in the UK to enter, so there should be no concern about their residency.

A visitor to the UK can buy a national lottery ticket, yet they can’t enter this? Time for the lawyers to be reminded about needless restrictions getting in the way of business. Only restrict things to residents when you actually need to, only require a UK address for service when you actually need to. And this time, you didn’t. I spotted a small number of abandoned forms about the place where people had begun to put their overseas details, then scored it out – presumably when they read the T&C before submitting. (Indeed someone even ringed it!)

Sticking on niggle things regarding ToL, historically there has been a bit of a problem with the menus from the ‘featured participants’ being not that great for a veggie, given that they tend to only have 3-5 dishes each, and with one or two of them often a desert. I’m pleased to say this is slowly improving, and I should say a thank you to Jo Cardow from the Event Organisers who kindly sent through a list of the select (it should be said) number of featured participants who had included dishes that were veggie compatible in their selection.

Although I reiterate that they still don’t mark veggie dishes on the menus, which only mention the headline ingredient, and you never know when a fish sauce etc will be used without checking Veggie marking the menu would assist not only-veggies, but your other guests who know they have veggies within their party about which stalls are good for the whole group.

Without a free ticket offer, I’m hesitant about whether I would recommend going next year to be honest. But they could start by marking the menus up for veggies and those bringing veggies, that might get them a brownie point.

Anyway, after a slight surge of weddings and summer events, I’ve got a couple of update posts to write, so stand by!


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