Latest news with #BarLevan
Yahoo
25-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
First-ever wine festival with tastings, food pairings and DJs set for south London
A new festival for wine lovers is coming to Battersea Power Station. The Wine Circuit will take place from June 6 to June 8, celebrating both British and international wines. The festival will feature a range of wine-themed activities, including tastings, food pairings, and panel discussions with industry experts. Visitors can also participate in The Wine Cup, a tasting experience where they can vote for the 'Best in Show' and 'Highly Commended' wines from independent wineries and wine shops. Power Station Park transforms into alfresco wine and food market (Image: An artisan market will offer wine-related gifts and gadgets. Battersea Power Station, home to over 150 shops, bars, restaurants, and leisure venues, will provide festival exclusives throughout the weekend. The event will kick off on the evening of June 6 with the Strictly Bangers wine tasting and music event, founded by Mark Gurney, co-owner and director at Bar Levan. Attendees will participate in blind tastings and a quiz, with prizes up for grabs. From the Ashes BBQ and Fallow among pop-ups serving exclusive pairings (Image: Dan Burns) There will also be live DJ sets with Mark Gurney and special guests. The wine list for the event has been curated by Bar Levan and will be supported by Paola Tich, The Beach Sommelier, and Natalia Ribbe, Ladies of Restaurants and Sete in Margate. A series of ticketed wine tasting sessions and panel discussions will be held by wine industry experts on June 7 and June 8. These will cover topics such as natural wine, British wine, sparkling wine trends, alcohol-free wine, and choosing the perfect pale rosé. Power Station Park will be transformed into an alfresco market with pop-ups from Vagabond Wines, Beare Green Winery, Oxney Organic Estate, Sandbridge Barton, Domaine des Jeanne, ETO, La Mad, Battersea Brewery, and Tillingham. Festival-goers can purchase a ticket to participate in The Wine Cup, where they can taste wines from around the world and vote for their favourites. Tickets cost £30 and include a branded tote bag and cup, as well as a tasting card. Exclusive wine and food pairings will be available from pop-ups such as From the Ashes BBQ, Masa Tacos, Made of Dough, and Tasca. The team behind Fallow will also be serving their famous fried chicken paired with frozen margaritas, wine, and beer towers. An artisan market will offer bottle stoppers, corkscrews, decanters, wine glasses, and other wine-related gifts. Many of the bars and restaurants at Battersea Power Station will join The Wine Circuit with their own wine-themed activities. Vagabond Wines will host a duo of wine and cheese tasting events on June 8, while Searcys Champagne Bar will have their Champagne Rolls Royce bar in Power Station Park. Kate Boothman-Meier, head of communications and marketing at Battersea Power Station Development Company, said: "Battersea Power Station has become one of London's most beloved food and drink destinations and we pride ourselves on our wide selection of bars, cafes and restaurants available across the riverside neighbourhood. "We're always keen to offer new and unique experiences to our visitors and we are excited to host our first-ever wine festival next month. "We look forward to welcoming visitors for a weekend full of fun, wine-themed activities suitable for wine aficionados and novices alike." Travelling to Battersea Power Station for The Wine Circuit is easy, with the Zone 1 Battersea Power Station Underground station bringing the riverside neighbourhood within 15 minutes of the West End and the City. Battersea Power Station also has its own Uber Boat by Thames Clippers pier and is a 15-minute journey from Embankment, 20 minutes from Blackfriars, 30 minutes from Putney, and 40 minutes from Canary Wharf. The riverside neighbourhood is easily accessible by bus, bike, car, and train too.
The Guardian
07-04-2025
- General
- The Guardian
Grate expectations: cheese toasties are having a moment, and I'm all for it
A dispatch from the menus of the capital's fancier pubs, Instagram restaurants and wine bars: there's a new favourite dish in town. Though maybe 'new' is the wrong word. Cropping up in the types of establishments where you'll easily pay a fiver for olives is the humble but universally beloved cheese toastie. I'd call it a renaissance, but that would ignore the fact that the toastie is and has been for decades a staple of busy lunches, sick days and CBA dinners, when all you're after is instant satisfaction. Let's say instead, then, that the cheese toastie has had a bit of a culinary glow-up. I've seen them recently on lots of different menus across London. Bar Levan in Peckham lists a croque monsieur, while the Library, a swish cocktail bar in Maida Vale, promises a straight-up toastie dripping with strong cheese, plus tart chutney served on the side for dipping. Elsewhere, Farringdon's Quality Wines – whose head chef, Nick Bramham, is something of a trendsetter across the capital when it comes to sharing menus – has also had a croque monsieur on the pass (replete with provolone, Brie de Meaux, Prince de Paris ham and truffles), while the Knave of Clubs in Shoreditch has devoted a whole section of its menu to toasties. Marceline in Canary Wharf recently held a croque monsieur competition, where chefs competed to have their sandwich crowned top of the croques. If you ask me, this is all excellent news, first because who has ever refused hot molten cheese between slices of crisp bread after one to three drinks? Second, the sudden prevalence of the toastie in restaurants signals a sea change among the attitudes of people designing more 'upmarket' menus. Where once it felt like these were lists of dishes detailing what chefs thought the rest of us should want to eat – plates of meats with uncommon provenances (sorry to say, these tend to pretty much taste like premium supermarket salami), or patés en croûte that take dozens of steps to create – now it's more like they're catering to what the majority of people actually want. Cheese toasties and croque monsieurs represent accessible, widely enjoyed flavours, and while I'd agree with the purists who say the two are not the same, the comfort-food sentiments they convey are inarguably pretty similar. Either way, it's reasonable to ask: why the change in outlook on small plates menus? As with most things concerning food and lifestyle trends, we can probably look to social media. While quality ingredients are as important as ever, the ability to grab attention now plays a huge part in the success of a dish, particularly in the Instagram economy, where a great photo can cause a viral sensation. The XXL three-cheese toastie at the Wigmore in central London, for example, has been a staple on the menu for years, foreshadowing the 2025 trend, largely because it looks so impressive. Not all of the toasties I'm thinking of here are extra-extra-large, but they do appeal to people's sense of novelty and nostalgia – both of which hit hard on social media. Dishes like cheese toasties stand out on a posh menu precisely because they typically feel so ordinary – and in recent times, everything from Viennetta to bread and butter pudding has been given the restaurant treatment. Chefs and potential customers scrolling through the algorithm get excited by new twists on familiar dishes, or the opportunity to make or try an 'ultimate' version of a classic: look at Quality Wines' superlative version of the croque, for example. As such, the cheese toastie boom feels like a symptom of that impulse – a bit like an updated version of the gourmet burger boom of the early 2000s. Ultimately, cheese toasties popping up on the menus of wine bars and posh pubs is a positive thing. This is a hearty, filling dish, which, let's be honest, feels like better value for money than a plate of fancy charcuterie. Plus, it also seems to signal movement in the small plates world. Of course, where a bougie wine bar is found, a devilled egg won't be far behind, but these places are now beginning to serve a few more dishes that cater to the appetites that see us craving kebabs and chips after a night of drinking. Life, as they say, is all about balance. Lauren O'Neill is a culture writer
