DORSET Slow Food and Bournemouth and Poole College’s Escoffier Restaurant are two organisations with a real passion for food.

Slow Food supports local producers of outstanding quality and the Escoffier is expert at transforming the raw ingredients into mouth-watering dishes, so their coming together this week was a delight for all concerned.

Themed evenings at the Escoffier have been a highlight of Bournemouth’s gastronomic scene for many years and The Slow Foods Vintage Classic event is a fine addition.

Slow Food used its county-wide connections to put The Escoffier in touch with Dorset producers. Year two students on the BTEC National Diploma in Hospitality Supervision course then jumped at the opportunity to display their skills.

The team were responsible for every aspect of the evening: drafting the menu, budgeting, marketing the whole event, preparing, cooking, and serving food and drink throughout the evening.

They even went to the superb Allenbrook trout farm to cull the fish themselves. It doesn’t come any fresher than that!

Attention to detail was splendid, with the waitresses sporting little vintage hairpieces, the place settings incorporating vintage china cups and saucers and the excellent live musicians pitching classic numbers in just the right style.

Josephine Pearce, event manager at the School of Hospitality, uses a classic method to assess the success of a menu: do the plates come back clean? Clean they were, whether the courses were leek and watercress veloute or pot roast veal.

Josephine also said that it’s the variety of the course which has kept her so motivated in teaching and learning even after 26 years.

Speaking on behalf of Slow Food Dorset, John Billington said such evenings were perfect for realising the movement’s aim of reinvigorating people’s interest in the food they eat, where it comes from and how our food choice affects the world.

Sponsors of the event were Stoate and Son – Bakers, Brookfield Farm – High Welfare English Veal, The Watercress Company, Shaftesbury Estates’ Riverford Organic Farms, Liberty Fields, Conker Gin, Capreolus Charcuterie, Db foods Ltd, Sherborne Castle and Sarah’s Victoriously Vintage.

n The Bournemouth and Poole College’s BTEC National Diploma in Hospitality Supervision covers every aspect of hospitality supervision and management. For course details, see www.thecollege.co.uk n For more on Slow Food contact Julia Willoughby at slowfooddorset@gmail.com