Isla Campbell on a dining festival she signed up for out of pure curiosity and left thinking about for days
I’ll be honest, the only reason I booked into Plated London was that it included an exclusive menu at Harvey Nichols and I’ve always wanted a proper excuse to sit down and eat there rather than just wandering through looking at things I can’t afford to buy.
The Actual Booking Process
More than thirty restaurants, bars, and hotels across Chelsea and Knightsbridge are taking part throughout the entire month, so I had genuinely too many options and spent nearly an hour deciding before landing on Harvey Nichols purely out of nosiness about the dining room I’d never actually sat in.
What I Actually Ordered
I let the exclusive festival menu decide for me rather than agonising over the full menu, which turned out to be the correct choice, because whatever they’d specifically designed for this event was considerably more inventive than I expected from what I’d assumed would be a fairly standard department store restaurant.
The Dish That’s Still On My Mind
There was a starter involving something so delicately balanced between sweet and savoury that I actually made a small noise out loud at the table, which is embarrassing to admit but true, and I’ve been trying to recreate the flavour combination in my head ever since, entirely unsuccessfully, which is genuinely irritating given how simple it looked on the plate.
The Bit Where I Got Slightly Too Comfortable
By the third course I’d fully relaxed into pretending this was just a normal Tuesday evening for me, chatting to the waiter about the festival, asking far too many questions about ingredients, generally behaving like someone who eats there regularly rather than someone who’d booked purely because of the shop’s window displays.
Whether I’ll Actually Go Back
I’ve already looked at two more restaurants on the Plated London list for next weekend, which suggests this festival has done exactly what it was designed to do: get me spending considerably more on Chelsea and Knightsbridge dining than I’d ever actually budgeted for this particular August.