I’ve been to the Taste of London event a couple of times before, once paying and once on a blagged corporate ticket. As a concept, getting a good percentage of the top London restaurants to provide high quality food in bite size portions all at the same event, sounds fine. In practical terms, paying £25 for entry and then £4-12 per dish is not even close to being value for money. Whilst you can get some free samples, most things need to be paid for in event currency (crowns - 2 for £1) and the only reason for the high entrance fee I can see is to set a monetary barrier for the less well off.

This year, however, I’d managed to not only get free entry, but also a Guardian press pass which proved invaluable in getting freebies! The Word of Mouth team had decided to liveblog the event, so invited regular WoM contributors to help them with the liveblog via Twitter. The idea was for 10-12 of us to wander around the event, tasting the various dishes, speaking to producers and then writing a 146 character review via twitter, where other attendees could see what was hot and what wasn’t quite so good without having to spend their hard earned cash to find out.

A breakfast Masterclass with Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall was also offered on the Friday, which, as luck would have it, I was offered, along with Catlily, another WoM regular. However, when we turned up to the Masterclass with WoM Editor Susan Smillie and Food Journalist Tim Hayward, I found out that it wasn’t a private class, as I’d presumed, but that we would be assisting HFW on stage, in front of a several hundred strong audience! Several minutes later, I was quite relieved to find that it had fallen through due to the fact that none of the people back stage nor HFW himself had been informed that he’d be getting a couple of additional helpers on stage with him.

At this stage, (Friday midday) I just expected that all I’d have to do was to wander around the event, eating what I wanted and then writing a few tweets on twitter. However, this is what was planned for the Saturday, when the rest of the Word of Mouthers were due to arrive and in fact, not a lot had been setup with any of the restaurants or producers at this point. So, I was put to work, along with Fingerstoes, who’d just arrived, and Catlily to help set up the liveblog event for the Sat.

Now, wandering around an event trying to blag stuff for free from strangers is not something I’d choose to do on my day off, but I thought I’d may as well enter into the spirit of pretending to be a food journalist, so went off on my own to try my luck. I have to admit, most of the people I approached were a little suspicious of providing free food to a flashmob of Guardian reading foodies, not least because my press pass had been completed with felt tip, but in a couple of hours, I’d managed to get Tamarind, Odettes and Purbeck’s Ice-cream on board, as well as starting my breakfast assignment.

A quick round up at Tim Hayward’s place finished off the day’s work before I had to get back to pick up the little one and then look forward to the eating extravaganza the next day.