Quick Lunch with Slow Food

Yesterday was a very good food day. It was almost a very, very good food but, perhaps happily in terms of waistline, the proposed brunch meeting got brought forward to Sunday evening drinks. Still, lunch followed by Dinner with Dos Hermanos was still a pretty damn impressive effort.

I'll get to the latest Majumdar Spectacular in a day or two (thanks to Bob Crowe being an insufferable wanker of the highest and wankiest order, I can't go anywhere by tube for 48 hours so I might as well catch up on blogging), but just a quick note - ironically - about lunch.

I'd been invited out by Catherine Gazzoli, the new(ish) CEO of Slow Food. As an organisation, Slow Food has come in for a kicking in recent years and, frankly, it's probably justified. With Catherine, a no-nonsense New Yorker, on board, you get the feeling all the kicking is now coming from within. If you've been wondering, like many, just what Slow Food is all about, expect a lot of information and changes in the coming months...

Anyway, we rattled through a great lunch deal at Moti Mahal yesterday and crammed a lot of food, chat and information into a very enjoyable hour. With the knowledge of the meat feast to come, I resisted the urge to order the chicken and instead went for the spiced vegetable dumplings in a yoghurt and saffron sauce. Sounds like a gentle, korma-style affiar, doesn't it? It wasn't. The sauce was rich, thick and packed deceptive fire. A fine naan, some not so great potatoes and decent cauliflower cakes bolstered the meal and it all came to a princely £12 a head. If they switched the spuds for a bowl of rice, this would be as good a swift lunch deal as you can find in Covent Garden.