London is one capital city where the world converges all the year round. Under all kinds of excuses, pretexts, reasons. Work, pleasure, play. Not the least to enjoy the food it offers at its fabulous restaurants.

So when there is an annual summer event which celebrates the joy of eating good food you can be sure it will be a huge temptation for the world to land up there. And it does. At the leafy Regent’s Park, the venue for Taste of London.

It’s a four day festival, spread over a section of the beautiful park where the finest of food and wine is available as also gourmet products, a range of speciality ingredients and kitchen gadgets.

But the activity does not stop at just imbibing. There are cookery demonstrations by top chefs of the city, workshops on wine and other interactive activities, much like the UpperCrust Show, which is the only one of its kind in India and which takes place in the first weekend of December, every year.

The venue at Regent’s Park is very creatively done up. In tents, pitched at comfortable distances from each over, some single, some in a cluster. There’s ample space to walk around, get the feel of the whole place, not claustrophobic yet not too wide spread.

So there you are walking along purple carpeted walkways, darting into different tents, tasting from menus of posh and well-known restaurants of London which have participated in this year’s Taste festival. These could be signature dishes from some of the most exclusive restaurants, freshly cooked at mini-kitchens on site and served at a fraction of the price you would pay for the full sized dish at their restaurants. It’s an interesting concept. You get to try out the fare from fancy restaurants at un-fancy prices. Of course these are really small tasting portions, but that’s what you want. To wander around and taste as much as you can.

So which were the restaurants present this year? To name a few: Le Gavroche, Fifteen, Pied A Terre, Angela Hartnett and also our own Indian restaurants like Benaras and Tamarind. A line up of renowned chefs representing these restaurants are also around, meeting with people, answering questions, explaining their creations, generally chatting with those who are keen to talk to them.

After walking around a bit going from one fine-dining experience to another I made my way to Atul Kochhar’s booth. He, of the Benaras fame. Indian cooking requires ample space and yet when I located Atul he was in the tiny make shift kitchen with a whole lot of marinated meat on skewers for a backdrop, looking perfectly comfortable, I was impressed. The kebabs melted in my mouth.

I then went and checked out Tamarind. Chef Alfred Prasad was up to his neck. The queue of people standing patiently extended way out of his tent.

When I could eat no more and had also exhausted all my Crowns, the official currency which you can buy in advance with your ticket or go to a bank at the venue and purchase, I found my way to the Taste Theatre. It was the cookery demonstration area. Very unusually designed, it was a tunnel-like enclosure with a stage at the far end. Celebrity chefs would give food demos over here the next few days. As luck would have it Gary Rhodes - who I have had the pleasure of cooking with for a British television show - was about to start a demo. He was cooking fish. Now here is a guy who has the perfect skills – as chef and showman. You have to be a good chef to succeed, but in order to be truly successful and popular it helps to have the gift of the gab. And Gary who has an on ongoing TV show, has that in abundance. You could see the crowd eating out of his hands.

I found the visitors, who were a mix of Londoners and foreigners, to be a rather discerning lot. They were there to relax, have some fun no doubt, but also to learn, make the most of a good opportunity. They were attending tasting classes, or undergoing the ‘Wine Experience’ or a ‘Specialty Beer Masterclass’. I saw them in serious discussion with people selling olives (at a Turkish olive booth from where I bought at least five varieties and got them back home to India to savour with my friends), understanding which knives to use, learning how to bake bread and so on.

Apparently the Taste Of London is now on every foodie’s social calendar. It has built quite a reputation for itself. In the past chefs and restaurants that have graced Regent’s Park include Gordon Ramsay with Boxwood Café, Alan Yau with Yauatcha, Jamie Oliver with Fifteen, Ken Hom with Imperial City and Anthony Worral Thompson with Notting Grill.

The company partnering this event is British Airways. It’s a great tie-up. British Airways epitomizes good food on board their flights and I was rather glad to meet with the clutch of chefs, the world’s finest that they are associated with. Shaun Hill, Nicholas Lander, Liam Tomlin, and very own Vineet Bhatia, whose restaurant Rasoi has earned one Michelin star. UpperCrust has had the pleasure of dining with him and featuring him in the magazine when he was at Zaika.

What was nice is the chefs of the airline were at hand to showcase a selection of sumptuous dishes and wines and demonstrate the skills required to serve gourmet quality food at an altitude.

For British Airways, the idea behind working with these top chefs is to include some of their signature dishes on board. These are created at innovation workshops with their catering suppliers in London and the world over.

The new selection that BA has introduced is quite a mouthful: The British cheeseboard in First, with a selection of British cheeses, accompanied by Lincolnshire Plum Loaf, a traditional Myer’s family recipe dating back to 1901. A full classic English breakfast with Glouster Old Spot Bacon and Cumberland sausage. In Club world, they have Micheal Roux’s seared fillet steak and the old favourite shepherds pie with cheesy potato top made with British minced lamb, fragrant herbs, roasted carrots – the ultimate in comfort eating. For their World Traveller, which means Economy class, they have a treat too: the traditional English trifle with fresh raspberries and red currants.

All this I gathered hobnobbing with Shaun Hill and Liam Tomlin, as I sat in the elegant tent meant exclusively for British Airways and their guests. The champagne flowed non-stop, the canapés were superb. I also met with Peter, the man who selects all the wines that the airline serves. Jancis Robinson is also one of their wine consultants. I had met Jancis in Delhi many years ago and she had loved the name of this magazine “UpperCrust”, she wrote in her column in London’s Financial Times, “is such a delightful name for a food and wine magazine”.

Taste of London was a good experience. London in summer is anyway a good experience and if you are staying at Grosvenor House in Park Lane overlooking the Hyde Park, nothing can be better. But more about Grosvenor which has just undergone a multi million pound restoration in one of our future issues. Until then cheers to the good life.