{"id":31689,"date":"2025-04-19T01:39:08","date_gmt":"2025-04-19T01:39:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/31689\/"},"modified":"2025-04-19T01:39:08","modified_gmt":"2025-04-19T01:39:08","slug":"living-the-sweet-life-the-chicest-and-best-dessert-places-in-london-are-revealed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/31689\/","title":{"rendered":"Living the sweet life: The chicest and best dessert places in London are revealed"},"content":{"rendered":"

Well, a restaurant designed for the Instagram generation needs Instagrammable food to match. Just look to Bacchanalia, where towering Damien Hirst sculptures and invaluable, antique Roman artworks draw in a crowd desperate for that special occasion photo opp. And in a place as opulent as this, it would be somewhat anti-climactic to serve a simple pavlova to finish.<\/p>\n

Enter: Medusa. This medley of meringue, raspberry, coconut and pistachio \u2013 priced at \u00a355 \u2013 is shaped like the gorgon\u2019s face. One video of the dish posted on Bacchanalia\u2019s Instagram has over 100,000 likes, and variations of this footage appear not infrequently on the account. (It\u2019s clearly a winning formula for marketing.) Theo Zarikakis, executive head chef at Bacchanalia, tells me that they serve around 90 of these a week \u2013 even more in the run up to the festive period \u2013 and that some customers pop into the bar just for this dish.<\/p>\n

\u2018Creating an iconic house<\/a> dessert was something we knew we wanted to do from the get-go,\u2019 he explains. \u2018We chatted with Damien Hirst for his permission to create a version of his Medusa statue, and got a bespoke mold made up \u2013 the result totally exceeded our expectations.\u2019 \u00a355 to eat a miniature Damien Hirst? Well, how often in life does one get that opportunity? (And in any case, it\u2019s certainly better value than the \u00a34.9 million paid by a cryptocurrency entrepreneur to eat a modern artwork of a banana duct-taped to a wall.)<\/p>\n

Preparation for this dish is extensive: a meringue base piped in a spiral, a homemade raspberry gel, then coconut and white chocolate namelaka, pistachio cr\u00e8me, cocoa-nib tuille, coconut chips and fresh raspberries. The plate is finished at the table, where a raspberry sauce is poured over the white dessert. \u2018Guests love that moment,\u2019 says Zarikakis. \u2018And it brings a moment of joy \u2013 if they want to capture that on their phone and remember it, we encourage that.\u2019<\/p>\n

As for the marketing potential, it\u2019s all important. \u2018In this day and age, having something that causes a bit of a stir, a bit of a \u201cHave you seen the new dish at\u2026?\u201d is the standard. It\u2019s what we of course want \u2013 word of mouth and people snapping a quick picture of something is how we keep things exciting, our restaurant busy, and our guests intrigued to try us.\u2019<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s exactly what I witness during dinner at Gaia. Every time that one of these desserts is brought out, there are sideways glances and whispers of intrigue. And some are completely unphased by the price: as I\u2019m waiting for the delivery of my lobster pasta, I notice that the table of two behind me have ordered a portion each \u2013 \u00a372, plus service charge \u2013 only to end up leaving about two-thirds. Other diners are less cavalier. I hear the table next to me discussing how good the yoghurt looks, only to exclaim in shock when they see the price. Still, they place the order; such is the allure.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Well, a restaurant designed for the Instagram generation needs Instagrammable food to match. Just look to Bacchanalia, where…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":31690,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7757],"tags":[748,393,4884,257,280,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-31689","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-london","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-england","10":"tag-great-britain","11":"tag-london","12":"tag-restaurants","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114362080607980901","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31689","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31689"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31689\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31690"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}