Food & Jazz – On top of the High Street

Really thrilled to share a superb food experience at our friends’ Bianca and Massimo’s restaurant, in Totnes, in the heart of South Devon, UK –  a few months ago now. 

As you enter the restaurant  an atmosphere of colour, artistic inspiration and intimacy welcomes you.  At the same time you sense a feeling of space and dimension emerging from the eclectic nature of everything around you, it is almost as if you have stepped into another country – with an Italian theme, haha.

For a start, here you can get organic food either locally sourced or from personally visited  growers/producers in Italy, – here you can go for vegan dishes and gluten free as well. We, John and I, came for a late dinner in the evening and enjoyed a series of Italian dishes including pasta, olives and aubergines served in a way we had never experienced before. You can bring your own wine along, which we did.

We had a selection of exciting dips, figs, olives and roasted nuts. The dips were hummus, aubergine paste and olive paste and the figs were served  individually, coated with a chilli mix which was a delicious combination. The olives were in a marinade that included cumin and is one of the best kind of olives I’ve had.  Everything was served in beautiful small pottery bowls and we spent quite a lot of time enjoying this first part of the meal as there was so much to taste.

Next  was a pasta dish and served in a herbie sauce – very tasty. This was followed by an art piece of a salad with  a variety of ingredients including lettuce, avocado, tomato and blood oranges – again the combination of the dressing, which had balsamic vinegar in it and the sweetness of the oranges/tomatoes was new and exciting to me. 

We finished off our meal by sharing a hazel nut and dark chocolate bar  accompanied with loose leaf tea and freshly ground coffee, served on individual small trays.

Both Bianca and Massimo’s background as professional musicians and artists  shine through  in the way they create their dishes and the atmosphere around them. For me as much as this was a culinary experience, it was an aesthetic experience too as every dish was composed like a  piece of music in its taste and wider presentation, leaving you with a satisfied feeling afterwards.

The jazz music in the background was  ‘prikken over i‘et’  as we say in Danish. A celebration of being local, European and global 🙂