This past Wednesday I attended the ETM bloggers bar crawl which was super, super fun. Blogger friends who came along included Greedy Diva, LondonFoodie, WineSleuth, Missimmo, Teatimeinwonderland and Faerietalefoody. ETM operate a number of gastropubs in London and we hopped along from one ETM bar after another, sampling food and drinks (listed at the bottom of this post) along the way.

First up was the lovely, elegant Chiswell Street Dining Rooms where we tried a number of canapés such as seared Isle of Man king scallop with crispy bacon and pea purée; smoked eel with horseradish; foie gras ballotine on brioche with Madeira jelly; leek and wild mushroom tart and soft boiled quail’s egg with truffled duxelle. Particularly delicious was the mini Aberdeen Angus beef Wellington as the meat was plump and juicy.

At The Hat and Tun we had a starter of Herefordshire snail & smoked bacon pie with a Guinness and mushroom cream sauce. The snails were nice, but the sauce was very runny, and both the filling and the pastry needed more seasoning.

Snail & smoked bacon pie

We had our main at The White Swan, a dish of roasted Cornish line-caught turbot with Dorset crab beignets, braised young turnips and salsify, turnip tops and bisque butter sauce. The fish was nicely cooked, moist and flavoursome but a little under seasoned.

Cornish line-caught turbot

A canapé selection of desserts was served at The Botanist, that very glamorous bar on Sloane Square. These included lemon meringue pie, custard tart, baked gooseberry cheesecake, fig pudding and chocolate and pecan brownies. The desserts were decent, but I enjoyed the cheesecake the best.

Desserts

Our last stop was at The Cadogan Arms (where I must confess I didn’t have the best meal on my last visit – to read that post click here). There’s a lovely area upstairs at The Cadogan where you can play pool and hang out which is where we ended our evening. Here we treated to a selection of digestifs. Greedy Diva, did I hear you complaining about the effects of too much Armagnac the day after?

Thanks to the people at ETM for inviting us along. It was a fab evening.

Drinks menu

Chiswell Street Dining Rooms
Old Eliot cocktails with Plymouth gin

Hat and Tun
Montagny, 1er Cru Le Vieux Château, J.M. Boillot 2008
Savigny Les Beaune, 1er Cru Fourneaux, Jean J. Girard 2008

The White Swan
Semillon, Boekenhoutskloof, Franschhoek 2007
Château La Chenade, Lalande 2006

The Botanist
Tokaji Late Harvest, Royal, Hungary 2008