Culinary Icon Simon Hopkinson to Host Beaujolais Celebration at Noble Rot

The British culinary icon Simon ‘Hoppy’ Hopkinson will host a special Beaujolais nouveau celebration at Bloomsbury restaurant Noble Rot on Thursday 16 November, the restaurant has announced.

Though Hopkinson will not be cooking, he will be hosting the restaurant’s second annual ‘Fête de Beaujolais.’ Head chef Paul Weaver will be cooking classic dishes from three of Hopkinson’s seminal cookbooks: ‘Week in Week Out,’ ‘Roast Chicken & Other Stories’ and ‘The Good Cook.’

Eater London was given an advanced look at the menu, which includes:

• Canapé: Oysters Rockefeller;
• Starters: Calves brains with sauce gribiche; Scallop mousse with mornay sauce;
• Main courses: Potato gnocchi with garlic and basil cream; Coq au vin; Hake cutlet au poivre;
• Dessert: Ginger sponge; Orange crème caramel

Beaujolais nouveau is a very young, light and popular red wine made from Gamay grapes, produced in the Beaujolais region of eastern France, north of Lyon. It is a wine fermented for only a few weeks (vin de primeur) and has historically always been released on the third Thursday of November.

It’s not the first time the restaurant — which also publishes the Noble Rot food and wine quarterly journal — has collaborated with an icon. For last year’s Beaujolais release, the restaurant invited the French chef Pierre Koffmann to take over the kitchen, while earlier this year, to celebrate the release of The Sportsman, chef (and Noble Rot exec) Stephen Harris hosted a one-day takeover of the restaurant.

Keeling, who last month shared plans of the company’s new wine import business, told Eater London that getting Hopkinson “is a bit of a coup for us.”

A wine tasting throughout the day is free. Reservations for the lunch and dinner can be made here.