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Flowers to tickle your taste buds

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Flower power: Harvey Nichols's Chelsea Flower Show tea

Fresh as a daisy: Roussillon's crispy honey-glazed sweetbread and queen of the field tempura

Eat your greens: Roussillon's green cannelloni

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The highlight of the horticultural calendar, the Chelsea Flower Show, will be upon us again next week — so dust off the daisies and bring on the begonias, we're all going flower power crazy. However, if smelling the roses just isn't enough for you, you can now eat them as well. London's restaurants have taken a leaf — or should we say a petal — out of the Royal Horticultural Society's book.

And we're not just talking lovely, fragrant bouquets on the tables or culinary staples that have been cleverly reinvented with a floral twist — the capital's top chefs have devised a whole new crop of florally inspired dishes, from entire menus to afternoon teas and cocktails. These run the whole gamut, from gently incorporated floral essences (an initiation for the nervous) to serving up the real thing — petals, stamens and all.

But if you're planning to attend the show at the Royal Hospital in Chelsea, don't make the mistake of eating the displays — you may find yourself unceremoniously ousted.

Here's our pick of the best floral treats on offer:

ROUSSILLON
If heas chef Alexis Gauthier's famous floral menus were part of the Chelsea competition, they'd easily win a gold medal. And this year's Flower Show Menu — a seven-course extravaganza at £70 a head — is no exception.

Starting with a delicate pretty-in-pink royale of rose petals with caramelised beet leaves and light prawn consommé, it builds up to earthier notes with cannelloni of tender petals with sautéed lovage (an old English herb) and honey-glazed sweetbread with queen of the field tempura, a Japanese-inspired dish utilising garlic flowers for their concentrated flavour. And how about a chrysanthemum soufflé crescendo to round things off ? (Available 19-24 May.)
Roussillon, 16 St Barnabas Street, SW1 (020 7730 5550)

HARVEY NICHOLS
You may feel blooming knackered after a hard day schlepping around the flower show, but an afternoon tea at Harvey Nics' Fifth Floor Restaurant will soon revive you. At a reasonable £45 for two, it promises dainty delicacies from violet-flavoured fairy cakes decorated with edible flowers to scones with rose petal and strawberry jam. But best of all is the champagne — your flute arrives at the table with a wild hibiscus flower in raspberry and rhubarb syrup nestling in its base, which unfurls before your eyes when the bubbly is poured in over it.
Harvey Nichols Fifth Floor Restaurant, 109-125 Knightsbridge, SW1 (020 7235 5250)

LE CERCLE
After feasting your eyes on all the goodies growing at the flower show, you can continue the floral theme with a gourmet menu of edible flowers at Le Cercle, one of London's most chic French fine-dining restaurants. Head chef Thierry Beyris concedes that although it may sound “bizarre or quaintly Victorian at least, edible flowers are utterly delicious in the right hands, and very voguish in French culinary circles”.

Beyris's menus of petits plats (floral tapas) are as delicious as they are beautiful: wild rocket sorbet with daisy, spring salad with violet dressing, sea bass tartare with lovely, peppery nasturtium. (Available 20-25 May, from £39 for four courses, £45 for five).
Le Cercle, 1 Wilbraham Place, SW1 (020 7901 9999)

THE BOTANIST
Tom and Ed Martin, the brothers behind East End gastropub success stories The Gun and The Empress, have picked the perfect time to go west. Today, they are opening the aptly named Botanist, their brand-new

British bar-restaurant in Sloane Square — just in time for the f lower show. To celebrate, they've concocted some fragrant new cocktails — the girly and totally gorgeous Rose Square (pinky rose petal vodka with lychees, rosebud syrup and champagne) and the Lavender Bloom (gin, fresh lavender, honey and apple juice). Inhale, imbibe and relax. Cocktails from £7.50.
The Botanist, 7 Sloane Square, SW1, 020 7730 0077

THE CINNAMON CLUB
Both the Chelsea Flower Show and the concurrent National Vegetarian Week (19-25 May) have inspired Chef Vivek Singh's Garden Menu at the Cinnamon Club (it's not a vegetarian restaurant but is renowned for its veggie grub). Running for the entire month of May, the five-course menu(£50) celebrates the season's exotic flowers.

The evening begins with a rose petal-infused bellini aperitif, followed by a truly exotic feast including essence of tomato with morels, marigold and edible gold leaf, stir-fried asparagus spears with banana flower, and is rounded off with jasmine and bergamot pana cotta.
The Cinnamon Club, The Old Westminster Library, 30-32 Great Smith Street, SW1 (020 7222 2555)

THE ATHENAEUM HOTEL
Now here's a more subtle take on the floral theme — perfect if you don't fancy guzzling whole flowers like Ermintrude from The Magic Roundabout. The Athenaeum Hotel's Petals and Pekoe Tea features prettily iced fairy cakes with sugar f lowers, scones scented with orange blossom and meringues with rose flavouring. The setting is beautiful, too — you can gaze at the hotel's very own sunken garden from the intimate alcoves of their Garden Dining Room. (£24.50 for tea, or £29.50 including a glass of champagne.) From 19 May to 20 July.
Athenaeum Hotel, 116 Piccadilly, W1 (020 7499 3464)

CLUB GASCON
You know flowers are a serious trend when they appear on the menu of Club Gascon, that bastion of French gastronomie. The Michelin-starred Smithfield restaurant has long been known for its penchant for foie gras and the seriously butch flavours of southwestern France. But chef Pascal Aussignac's new spring lunch (£28 for three courses) is tempered by a gentler touch and pairs up juicy mousseron mushrooms with saffron and spring tulip — tasting, for the record, not dissimilar to asparagus. Pudding sees a delicate rose chantilly cream perfectly matched to marinated rhubarb and champagne sorbet.
Club Gascon, 57 West Smithfield, EC1, 020 7796 0600

 

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