Green foam and truffle cream

A few days ago, my wonderful friend, Will (of My Good Man William), suggested we meet for coffee and a catch up. Maybe we went to the new Whole Foods, which I lovehate… maybe.

We went inside and Will ordered a coffee. I looked at the menu and got my Whole Foods brain on. I’m only interested if a baby giraffe provided the heat to steam the milk in my drink and if it has a funky name, said my Whole Foods brain.

That’s when I saw it, a drink on the menu called Matcha. I had had very few experiences of matcha but they had generally been positive. I ordered one, my faith in Whole Foods being absolute. They would not let me down, I knew it.

We took our drinks and sat down and when I took the lid off, this is what greeted me.

There is Will with his relatively safe flat white and there, at the front, is my green foam. It was kind of scary and didn’t taste much different to plain milk. All the powder had sunk to the bottom and when I got down there, it was not terribly pleasant, that’s all I’m saying, ok?

Thankfully, later that day, I went to Gaucho for dinner. There was no green foam there. It was a double celebration of a friend’s birthday and my blog’s 600th birthday! Yup. 600 posts. That’s a LOT of nonsense finding it’s way onto this blog every day. Time to celebrate!

If you haven’t heard of Gaucho, it’s an Argentinian steak restaurant and after you’ve been given a menu, a woman comes around with a massive board with huge hunks of raw meat on it. She talks you through each cut and how each one should be cooked for the best taste.

We were given some little cucumbery nibbles to start with.

They were way tasty. I hoovered them up in a matter of minutes. The others had barely taken hold of a stick to join in before the bowl was empty and I was looking a bit guilty.

After the steak-on-a-board chat, I smiled politely then ignored her advice, opening my menu and locating the only dish with truffles in it, a ravioli with black truffle sauce. I ordered a side of sweet potatoes chips with chorizo.

The chips were good but a little over salty. The main was also good because it tasted and smelt like truffles so I was happy. There’s just one small thing I would say – if Michel Roux was judging that dish on Masterchef, I imagine he’d say that it looked a bit like a yellow blob on a plate. It was nice, not especially memorable, but definitely nice. I just thought it could have been prettier. I like my food to look pretty. Mind you, it was verging on pitch black in there so I guess it doesn’t matter too much how it looks.

Danda got a steak which proved a bit hard to get into as they don’t believe in giving their customers steak knives, apparently.

Again, it was nice but he wasn’t blown out of the water.

Dessert time brought a moment of indecision so when the waitress arrived I just asked her to choose me the best thing. She brought me a strawberry cheesecake that was pretty good.

I think the layer in the middle was a kind of caramel mousse thing. I forget. It was tasty though.

The birthday boy ordered the warm sticky toffee pudding which was really tasty. We swapped desserts half way through as he started to get dessert envy and I scoffed the rest of his, despite being stuffed after my ravioli.

A post-dinner espresso was in order and, actually, I’d really recommend their coffee. It hits you right between the eyes without being bitter (the only other place I’ve had coffee that tasted like coffee rather than just bitterness, is in Italy). I was quite impressed.

All in all, a good day. I think little blog enjoyed it’s birthday celebrations.