Well the night has come to a close. The food has been cooked, served and eaten, the cocktails shaken and drunk (a lot). The Hawksmoor has been over-run by the London fooderatti and is now returned, spic and span to it’s usual form of best-steak-house-in-town - they have a coal grill in the kitchen you know. And some of the auctioning has closed - although only some, you can still join in on Ebay from Tuesday am.

And what a night it was, all 50 seats were filled with foodies. There may have been a very high staff to customer ratio (nearly 1 to 1) but hey, we’re professional eaters, not professional restaurateurs. At least it meant that everyone actually got their food, pretty much on time…

Oh the food, the food - Brock Hall Farm goats cheese with pomegranate seeds and vanilla salt on Peter’s Yard handmade sourdough crispbreads, chicken skin crisps, mozzarella, basil and heritage tomato kebabs, cheesy gougeres - and that’s just the canapes.

For starters we served Fish for Thought monkfish and beetroot tartare (pictured left, photo taken by MathildeCuisine), followed by beef stew, lamb hotpot, Laverstoke Park Farm buffalo steaks with béarnaise sauce. All served with sauteed potatoes, parsnip crisps and St John Restaurant’s handmade sourdough bread with organic butter from Sainsburys.

Everything was served family style to save us novice waiting staff from crumbling under the weight of orders, I was front of house with 8 others, and meant that with self serve portions no one went hungry (except the staff - how hard for foodies to be around so much food and not eat it, of course we had a few bowls of the deliciousness stashed in the back, and the odd martini helped too).

Before pudding we had a pause for the auction, and the free-flowing Chapel Down sparkling wine and Blagotinis ™ helped an already generous crowd to donate even more money into the Action Against Hunger pot. There were some cracking prizes on offer including a private cookery lesson in the Konstam kitchen, Hidden Tea Room afternoon tea and Launceston Place tasting menu.

Then came golden chocolate fondant cake, titillating Bompass & Parr jellies, tea and chocolate truffles from Lahloo Tea and Damian Allsop. There were a few hairy moments getting the gold-leaf nippled boob jellies out of the moulds, but thankfully there were lots of people on hand to help (or was that to stand around laughing and making innuendos - oh yes, that would be the latter ;).

And yet it still wasn’t over with a formidable selection of cheeses from Pong, Barbers’ 1833 Vintage Reserve Cheddar and Trethowan’s Dairy Gorwydd Caerphilly.

It was a fantastic night, both fun and worthwhile, guests left with a cheer in their hearts, a belly full of food and laughter and a goody bag fit to bursting with yet more lovely foody stuff. The generosity of suppliers was only surpassed by the generosity of the diners (and the stamina of the hardworking bloggers). If you’d like to join the team of donors it isn’t too late, we have lots more wonderful auction prizes on Ebay, starting Tuesday morning, there will be a few items released every day for at least a week, so check back daily for new goodies.

So dig deep and remember, it’s all for chaaaarity, mate.

PS A big thanks to all our donors, listed below

Tags: action against hunger, blaggers banquet

This entry was posted on Monday, November 16th, 2009 at 11:38 pm by urban foodie and is filed under Food News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.