Day 8: Eating Adventures at Sketch


When I booked Sketch, I didnt realize it was a four-hour experience, so that ended up being the bulk of the day--but it was worth it. It's actually multiple restuatants, a tea house, and a small club housed in one building, but we ate at the two-starred Micheli  Lecture Room & Library. (There are pictures of the other rooms here that are way better than the ones I took!) 





The first course was several little bites, including parmesan puffs with pear and sesame seeds, and chestnut leaves with parmesan on top.


The second was an endive salad...I have the menu somewhere so I'll post it later if I remember. It was both bitter and fresh are the same time.


I'm not sure what this crunchy potato thing was, since it came with Taylor's duck, but it was resting on a bowl of peppercorns sealed off with plastic for "presentation." Michelins be crazy.



My second to last savory course was a tempura artichoke with three sauces...one was bitter mole, one was mustard seed, and one is a mystery.


And then my final course...a tower of rice in an onion broth. Each layer was a different flavor, and the bottom was vanilla, which worked surprisingly well! This was the best of the savory courses. 


The dessert course is six small desserts, but I'm struggling to describe them...they were not particularly desserty flavors. The chocolate one tasted like musty old books to me, but the other ones were good, especially the one with the "blue water" in the middle of the picture.


The petite fours at the end of the meal...the little sandwich looking one was the absolute best bite I ate. It was creamy but with some salty grit to it and I have no idea how to describe the flavor other than sweet. Maybe some pistachio? We'll never know for sure because I didn't ask.


But I DID ask to meet the chef, so here we are in the kitchen after he gave us a quick tour of all the prep stations. He was so friendly and gracious. (The menu was designed by Pierre Gagnaire, a French chef, but I can't remember what the head chef's name was because of wine and also accents.)



Below are pictures of the garden room and the pink tea room...I'd really like to go back and have tea there. The egg pods are actually little contained bathrooms shaped like eggs...is it invasive to take a picture in the bathroom? Maybe, but then why is it designed like many small Mork and Mindy pods...you can't NOT take a picture.




You walk in through a winter wonderland forest with plenty of places to take a picture.


If this video works, you can see the light is an angel flapping its wings. As you can see, London is possibly the most festive place on earth.





After Sketch, we walked around and looked at all the lights and then headed to the Winter Wonderland in Hyde Park. The Wonderland is only set up for the holidays, and it has rides, a Christmas market, live music, and all kinds of food plus mulled wine and mead. If you ever wanted to see a whole pig roasting on a spit, this is your place.



We met another American couple on the street on the way to the Wonderland (I made some comment about rednecks and she yelled "yeehaw" and we ended up talking). We joined forces and roasted marshmallows at the big open fire pit before we went our separate ways. I'm way more social in Europe than I am at home, I guess.



How scary is this big British cowboy? Definitely more sinister than Big Tex.




Taylor and his mead in the Bavarian Village.



I thought this ride was awesome...the ornaments on the bottom of the tree are little cars that move up and down while the tree rotates. This isn't the last you'll see of the Winter Wonderland...I went twice the next day because it was so awesome.


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