A few weeks back, I received an intriguing invitation by email from The Living Room…
The Living Room invites you to a very special evening of fun, food and social media – with a twist.
DINING IN THE DARK is our take on how sumptuous food can be, but this is no ordinary supper party.
Join us for an evening of food and drink, and see how the taste sensation can be transformed when you can’t see.
We will have taster-sized treats from our new menu for you to enjoy, and your challenge is to identify the ingredients and flavours by taste and smell alone. No peeking!
The experience of what goes in our mouth is as much linked to sight as taste buds, so not being able to see means food and drink can taste different. It’s a real test and gives you the chance to put your gastronomic abilities to task – can you name key tastes and flavours if you don’t know what you’re eating?
Will you be the blogger on top when the blindfolds come off?
What a great way to celebrate a new menu launch! I was joined by fellow bloggers Growing Up, somethingdoing, The Resting Chef, sleep.wake.hope, le petit seraillet and Bristol Culture for an evening spent attempting to distinguish the flavours contained within nine dishes and three cocktails…all whilst blindfolded.
At the start of the evening, we were told that other branches of The Living Room all over the country were hosting similar events, and it was up to us to produce the top score nationally! No pressure then…
The evening kicked off with a beautiful Black Forest ham starter – all we had to do was to name the three accompaniments. Easy, right? Erm…not so much. It’s amazing how difficult it is to ascertain what you’re eating when you can’t actually see it…and I’m glad I’m not the only one in the group that wrote “fig” for what turned out to be raspberry!
“Something sweet” apparently didn’t quite cut it when trying to guess what the honey was in the butternut squash, walnut and Dolcelatte tart, while naming the flavours in the three different flavoured butters that we were given proved to be even more tricky.
I was pleased to get a full three out of three for naming the pork, chorizo and paprika in the burger that we sampled, but was embarrassed not to have realised that the meat in the shepherd’s pie was venison. I guess lamb would have been a little too obvious…
We were told afterwards that it was really interesting to see people’s different techniques when tasting their food: Danielle and Laura opting to nibble delicately at their food, sampling a little at a time, and Martin and Tom going for the “all in one mouthful” option. What we perhaps hadn’t anticipated was how the photos would turn out afterwards…
We all struggled with the cocktail tasters too, believing the green tea flavour in the daiquiri was actually flavours such as vanilla or lime, and struggling to identify the quince in the second cocktail.
None of us was expecting to beat the nationwide top score of 24…but there was still a trophy (and a bottle of wine!) at stake. Bizarrely, I somehow managed to take it home with a score of 24 and a half…result! Despite the score, though, I was still embarrassed by some of the ingredients that I got wrong. Thanks to the team at The Living Room for a fantastic evening…definitely want to try and do something like this again soon, and – based on the samples I tried last night – I’m sure I’ll be in for a meal soon!
Find The Living Room on the Bristol Bites Directory…
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