Goodwood, 31 August – 02 September 2007
On the evening of Tuesday 04 September, Cars International Kensington hosted
a select dinner party in their mews showroom in South Kensington, London. The
food was prepared on rudimentary facilities by celebrity TV chef James Martin,
whose CV includes having cooked for The Queen and Queen Mother at the age
of 11 years old, quite an accolade for someone so young! The Guest of Honour
was ex-F1 driver and now British F1 TV commentator, Martin Brundle, whilst the
Master of Ceremonies was TV presenter Tony Jardine, who had shared Cars
International CEO, Paul Osborn’s Ferrari 250 GT Lusso in the TT Race at the
Goodwood Revival Meeting the previous Sunday.
The dinner was organised in conjunction with Air Partners, a company
specialising in personal jet travel for clients wealthy enough to pay for the
privilege of avoiding the frustrating airport check-in and security queues, and
Champagne & Chateaux, a wine importer who specialise in fine quality wines
from smaller vineyards. The showroom setting provided a great dinner ambience
for the petrol head, as it is not every day that you can sit down to dinner with a
Ferrari F40 Prototype to your left, a F40 LM and 250 GT SWB Berlinetta in front of
you and the 1997 Japanese GP winning Ferrari F310 B F1 car to your right!
Each of the three courses were explained by James Martin before they were
served, to whet the appetite and to provide an insight into where the produce had
come from. Similarly Alain Thienot of Champagnes & Chateaux, gave an
explanatory briefing on the Champagne quaffed during the reception, and of the
wines accompanying each course of the meal. One can only say that the food
was truly excellent, and anyone would have thought that he had a full kitchen at
his disposal, not quite literally a “camping stove”, whilst the selected wines
perfectly complimented the courses.
The evening ended with a question and answer session with Martin Brundle,
hosted by Tony Jardine, which revealed some unrepeatable personal
observations about the current F1 scene, all of which were interesting and
entertaining. During his F1 career Martin had driven against both Ayrton Senna
and Michael Schumacher, and was a team mate to Michael at Benetton, so was
in a good position to judge their individual characters. He opined that he felt
Michael was the more ruthless of the two, but also thought that he was the most
complete driver of his era. It was one of those thoroughly enjoyable evenings that
just lingered, and could have gone on into the small hours, had you not taken the
staff into consideration!
Keith Bluemel
09/2007
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