{"id":4144,"date":"2012-01-18T11:47:13","date_gmt":"2012-01-18T11:47:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/?p=4144"},"modified":"2012-01-22T14:24:51","modified_gmt":"2012-01-22T14:24:51","slug":"dinner-at-the-wonderful-viajante-with-dirk-niepoort","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/portugal\/dinner-at-the-wonderful-viajante-with-dirk-niepoort","title":{"rendered":"Dinner at the wonderful Viajante with Dirk Niepoort"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"niepoort\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Sensational wines. Sensational food. Just what you want on a cold Tuesday night in January.<\/p>\n

\"viajante\"<\/a>
Amaranth with sorrel; onion brioche with stilton cheese; thai explosion 2<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Dirk Niepoort, one of the winegrowers I respect the most, was in town, and he kindly invited a small group to dine with him at Viajante<\/a> in Bethnel Green.<\/p>\n

The food was memorable and creative: a multicourse menu created by Portuguese-born chef Nuno Mendez, who’s worked all over the world, including a short internship in that famous, now deceased restaurant in Rosas.<\/p>\n

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Potato with yeast and freeze dried olive<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I had to leave at 11.15 pm, and sadly missed the last 6 courses, but I did catch the preceeding 14, which covered all but one of the savoury items. We had started at 7! [Please excuse the quality of the photos: there was virtually no light to work with, and I hate flash.]<\/p>\n

\n

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Walnut sourdough and codfish roll<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The wines were uniformly good, but two were outstandingly great. First, the 2002 Charme, which is now super-elegant, silky yet complex, slightly meaty and intense, with lovely red fruit character. It was perfect with a couple of the courses, including the accorda with lobster and truffle.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Prawns with frozen mayonnaise and bisque<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Second, the supremely elegant, pure Batuta 2008. Just so pure, with incredibly fine tannic structure. An immense wine that will be beautiful in a decade and will last far longer.<\/p>\n

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Roasted celeriac with homemade ricotta and lemon thyme<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"<\/a>
Accorda (Portuguese bread stew) with lobster and black truffle<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"<\/a>
Turbot and duck hearts<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"<\/a>
Langoustine with presa iberica and smoked endkis<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"<\/a>
Farinhiera, a Portuguese sausage, with cabbage<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sensational wines. Sensational food. Just what you want on a cold Tuesday night in January. Dirk Niepoort, one of the winegrowers I respect the most, was in town, and he…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,74],"tags":[350,383],"class_list":["post-4144","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-portugal","category-restaurants","tag-portugal","tag-restaurants"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4144","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4144"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4144\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4165,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4144\/revisions\/4165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}