simongr
Enthusiast
- Joined
- Jul 10, 2006
- Posts
- 14,307
Well just back home from a fantastic afternoon at the Sydney Good Food and Wine show - we are somewhat veterans of the good food show so have moved past the need to step over people for a tiny sliver of cheese so are now looking for something better at the show. So this year epiQure offered a private dining experience with Manu Fiedel for $195pp. I jumped at the chance as thought it would be a good insight into what and how he cooks and a nice thing for me and mrssimongr.
We weren't disappointed. But let's recap the day as a whole...
After hand balling boygr to his "Aunty" and diverting past the office to get my dry cleaning before the board meeting tomorrow and a trip to the UK this week (this is possibly the busiest time of the year for us) we drove to the Sydney convention centre and obviously couldn't park there so parked at the usual haunt "Harbourside" and got a surprisingly easy parking space. A short walk later we picked up some very nondescript tickets to the private dining session. At this point we didn't actually know if food was involved as Manu was "presenting his meal" rather than serving.
After that it was the usual meander around a bizarre range of food "related" experience and the usual fight over tiny slivers of samples - don't even ask about cheese alley as we just couldn't be bothered. We visited Nugan estate and were welcomed back after a year off by our usual Nugan rep - the Cookathama Botytris is stunning as always.
Finally 2:45 came and off to private dining we went. Sadly on time departure was not a feature of this flight as George Colmbaris had overstayed his welcome so we eventually sat down about 20 mins late. But from there things got great - as we sat there was an epiQure two bottle pack (sadly after the even we found it included a bottle of Chardy which I hate with a passion) at each seat and a copy of Manu's book. The MD of epiQure was there to take us through the dinner and spent a lot of time explaining the wine selection process at QF and their overall approach to wine - really interesting.
After that course by course Manu popped in to talk through the menu item, the approach to food and was really well complemented by the MD of epiQure talking about the wines - which were great. Manu answered lots of questions (yes he IS French and he is a third generation chef in his family), signed books aplenty and stopped for photos - George Colmbaris stopped by to heckle as well which added a bit of theatre.
The highlight of the day was the port which was to die for - I will try and scare up some details on that - if it ever makes it on board QF then if you are in whY THIS is what you should ask for
Overall an event for me that ticked every box - as a P1 (in the future) it is the sort of thing I would love to see in the P1 special events box.
They also mentioned a future food/flying tie up which sounded amazing but its not my place to announce so we can wait for Trevor to step in and announce at the right time.
No this event won't improve profitability of QFi but from an overall brand association for a frequent flyer this helps move me from being a pax to an advocate - although it is only part of the journey.
I wil be scouring the emails for future events like this.
And no I didn't mention the logistical issues some have had as I haven't personally been impacted by that.
For the record I ordered two cases of Nugan wine and wish I had spare cash to order another four cases of their Durif.
We weren't disappointed. But let's recap the day as a whole...
After hand balling boygr to his "Aunty" and diverting past the office to get my dry cleaning before the board meeting tomorrow and a trip to the UK this week (this is possibly the busiest time of the year for us) we drove to the Sydney convention centre and obviously couldn't park there so parked at the usual haunt "Harbourside" and got a surprisingly easy parking space. A short walk later we picked up some very nondescript tickets to the private dining session. At this point we didn't actually know if food was involved as Manu was "presenting his meal" rather than serving.
After that it was the usual meander around a bizarre range of food "related" experience and the usual fight over tiny slivers of samples - don't even ask about cheese alley as we just couldn't be bothered. We visited Nugan estate and were welcomed back after a year off by our usual Nugan rep - the Cookathama Botytris is stunning as always.
Finally 2:45 came and off to private dining we went. Sadly on time departure was not a feature of this flight as George Colmbaris had overstayed his welcome so we eventually sat down about 20 mins late. But from there things got great - as we sat there was an epiQure two bottle pack (sadly after the even we found it included a bottle of Chardy which I hate with a passion) at each seat and a copy of Manu's book. The MD of epiQure was there to take us through the dinner and spent a lot of time explaining the wine selection process at QF and their overall approach to wine - really interesting.
After that course by course Manu popped in to talk through the menu item, the approach to food and was really well complemented by the MD of epiQure talking about the wines - which were great. Manu answered lots of questions (yes he IS French and he is a third generation chef in his family), signed books aplenty and stopped for photos - George Colmbaris stopped by to heckle as well which added a bit of theatre.
The highlight of the day was the port which was to die for - I will try and scare up some details on that - if it ever makes it on board QF then if you are in whY THIS is what you should ask for
Overall an event for me that ticked every box - as a P1 (in the future) it is the sort of thing I would love to see in the P1 special events box.
They also mentioned a future food/flying tie up which sounded amazing but its not my place to announce so we can wait for Trevor to step in and announce at the right time.
No this event won't improve profitability of QFi but from an overall brand association for a frequent flyer this helps move me from being a pax to an advocate - although it is only part of the journey.
I wil be scouring the emails for future events like this.
And no I didn't mention the logistical issues some have had as I haven't personally been impacted by that.
For the record I ordered two cases of Nugan wine and wish I had spare cash to order another four cases of their Durif.
