I suffer from terrible fear of missing out (FOMO), especially when it comes to great opportunities to meet new people and taste great food! But with a wedding to organise and then an epic honeymoon I found myself unable to attend lots events that I wanted to go to. I even considered popping along to a Blogger’s Afternoon Tea the day before my wedding! But obviously I spent it with my family instead…
A few months ago I met with the lovely ladies from Zomato and I started adding my reviews to their website. I loved the concept of Zomato as it’s unlike other foodie websites, not only can you find amazing restaurants, add your own experiences and share them with your friends but you can also follow your favourite foodies and read their reviews. There is also a convenient app which allows you to see what restaurants are nearby and read the latest reviews from the foodies that you trust.
The fab team at Zomato had invited me to dinner Notting Hill Kitchen, dumpling making at Marani and another cocktail night, all of which, with regret I had to say ‘no’ to. Finally a couple of weeks ago when Alexandra from Zomato invited me to another cocktail meet up I was able to go!!
There was no more FOMO and I could join in the twitter conversation in the build up to the event!
The #ZomatoMeetup took place at Pacata, a fab new Covent Garden restaurant that fuses Eastern and Western cuisine to create innovation Asian Comfort Food.
It was great to put some faces to names / twitter handles.
From left to right is Amy from Yummei, Rebecca from Runaway Kiwi and Fiona from The Very Hungry Londoner. Not pictured, I also met Ella from Little Brown Books, Owen from Food Over London and Miho from Wander to Wonder. I love meeting fellow foodies and it was great to get everyone to together in one place. The cocktails that you can see the girls holding are A Secret Garden (containing apple, pear, cinnamon, rum and Singha beer) and Anahata Rama (gin, basil, ginger, lemongrass cordial, fresh lemon and guanbana juice), the perfect concoctions for a summer’s day!!
The Zomato gang led us upstairs for a surprise…
It was a Zomato themed rickshaw, we were asked to take some #Zelfies (Zomato Selfies) and post them across our social media. Obviously this involved a game of ‘See how Many Food Bloggers You Can Fit in A Rickshaw.’ We got around 8 people in but it was pretty wobbly…
Back inside Pacata another round of cocktails came out:
And we gathered round for a demonstration on how to make a Papaya Salad.
The Thai chef added chilli, cherry tomatoes, green beans, lime and garlic to the already prepared papaya and carrot.
He used a green papaya as opposed to the orange one that we’re used to and explained that it could purchased in Asian supermarkets but if you can’t get hold of one it can be substituted with celery or turnip. He added a mixture of fish sauce and cane sugar to the preparation and the spicy salad was ready to try.
As it’s so spicy, he explained it’s best eaten with the lettuce wrap – along with some pork scratchings! With appetites whetted it was time for more food and some canapes were circulating allowing us to try some dishes from the Pacata menu:
Popcorn chicken was the star of the night.
But chicken satays and mini Korean burgers also went down a storm.
Next it was time for a cocktail making lesson…
Pacata’s skilled barman put together a Hustler: he pounded lychees and passion fruit into a glass and added lemon juice, sugar syrup and ice…
and a good swig of gin…
And let us have a sniff of the orange liquor before adding that too. Then it was time for two intrepid bloggers to try their hand at cocktail making and with a generous amount of ‘juice ‘n gin’ the ladies prepared their rather tart Asian cocktails.
And so ended a rather fabulous night of foodie fun at Pacata.
If you enjoy my reviews I’d love for you to follow me on Zomato, that way you’ll never miss out either
Pacata
4 New Row Street
London
WC2N 4LH
020 724 01602
