Gazpacho, oak-smoked tomatoes and smoked vodka

I love it when a restaurant lays on an imaginative drink pairing and this was a terrific one from Ben Cooke at Little Gloster just outside Cowes on the Isle of Wight.

He had entered the dish - a yellow gazpacho made with Isle of Wight tomatoes, horseradish and crème fraîche topped with a crostino with mozzarella and oak-smoked tomato into a competition run by Chase Vodka - the Chase Smoky Mary - and won it.

The dish was strongly flavoured enough to carry the powerful flavour of the smoked vodka which was served as a frozen shot. It paired particularly well - as you might expect - with the smoked tomato.

It was only because it was such a good pairing that it pushed aside the other combination I might have made my match of the week - also at Little Gloster: a Ciu Ciu Le Merlettaie pecorino* with a starter of skordalia, grilled aubergines and courgettes. Garlicky dips are great with crisp fresh zesty whites. A Greek assyrtiko would have worked too.

*You can buy the 2014 vintage from The Good Wine Shop at £11.50 at the time of writing.

I ate at Little Gloster as a guest of the restaurant.

Japchae and a Happy Ending cocktail

I really think there are some cuisines that work better with cocktails than wine and Korean is one of them as I was reminded at the opening of celebrity chef Judy Joo’s JinJuu last week

The cocktail was a saucily named Happy Ending (if you don’t know why that's dodgy check here), a refreshing, orangey blend of Absolut Mandrin, Cranberry Juice and club soda.

It went brilliantly well with the food at the launch including crab cakes and mini bulgogi-style burgers but particularly with a spicy noodle dish called Japchae which consists of sweet potato noodles with stir-fried vegetables and a punchy soy and sesame sauce.

You could try a wine like a torrontes or gewurztraminer with it but the sweet orange flavour of the cocktail works so well.

Oscietra caviar and Galvin at Windows’ White Snapper

Last week was (highly unusually) a big week for caviar - and caviar substitutes which I ate on two successive nights paired with everything from vodka to beer. Decadent or what?

But it was this original and delicious cocktail - an inventive twist on the classic Bloody Mary - by the bar team at Galvin at Windows ‘caviar in the sky’ event that really stood out for me.

Apparently it was made with Bulldog gin, various (unspecified) spices and clarified tomato juice which gave it a delicate but not overpowering tomato flavour - and, as you can see, was very prettily garnished with a dried slice of lime.

We tried a whole range of caviars with it (from King’s Fine Food who sell online if you’re minded to repeat the experiment) and it pretty well sailed through them all except the denser, saltier, pressed caviar. The oscietra was my favourite though.

Fred Sirieix at Galvin at Windows is planning a caviar dinner on the strength of the tasting. Some of the prepared caviar dishes we tried from head chef Joo Won which included scallop tartare with lime zest and juice, olive oil, lychee, orange, borage flower, coriander cress and oscietra and crispy quail egg, charred baby leeks, cep cream and ceps with Siberian caviar were amazing. I’ll be writing more about the other pairings in due course.