Readers like you keep news free for everyone.
More than 5,000 readers have already pitched in to keep free access to The Journal.
For the price of one cup of coffee each week you can help keep paywalls away.
# posh nosh
Here's what's on the menu at tonight's gala dinner for President Higgins
It’s making us hungry.
President Higgins and his wife Sabina arriving at the Guildhall this evening.
IF YOU HAVEN’T had your dinner yet then you may want to look away now (or else face some feelings of inadequacy).
Michael D Higgins is attending a gala dinner at London’s Guildhall this evening and the menu has just been confirmed to the media.
Here’s what’s on offer, complete with poetically-worded descriptions.
Starter
Smoked trout timbale
A delicate mousseline of lightly smoked rainbow trout presented with a spring salsa of watercress orange, young tomatoes and Dublin Bay prawns.
Mains
Spring rabbit and date ravioli
Dorset rabbit meat slowly braised combined with the sweetness of dates in a handmade fresh pasta shell on a bed of baby spinach leaves, finished a tangy safe butter sauce.
Salt marsh lamb
Salt marsh lamb from the Gower Peninsula, prepared, cooked, and served in two different ways with a rosemary reaction and crushed new potatoes.
Dessert
Chocolate bread and butter pudding
A classic English dessert in harmony with Irish Whiskey ice cream, garnished with a London ‘Shard’ of sugar work.
Wines
Chateau Lagrange, 2003
Saint Julien Troisiéme Grand Cru Classé
Chateau Petit Védrines, 2011
Albarino Igrexario de Saiar, 2012
Bodega Sucesores de Benito Santos Rias Baixas
Fairtrade tea and coffee
Petits fours
Drinks
Craft LBV Port, 2008
Bushmills Irish Whiskey
Baron de Sigognac VSOP Armagnac
President Higgins is set to address 700 guests at the event, which is being hosted by the Lord Mayor of the City of London, Fiona Woolf (yes, the City of London has a separate mayor to the rest of London).
After he arrived at the Guildhall this evening, the President inspected the guard of honour, which was provided by the Honourable Artillery Company, before he headed inside for the meal.
Guests tonight will include broadcaster Terry Wogan, former boxer Barry McGuigan, actress Fiona Shaw, Dublin Mayor Oisin Quinn, RTE Director-General Noel Curran and his wife, former Taoiseach John Bruton and his wife, former footballer Kevin Moran, and Northern Ireland’s Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness.
Read: ‘They’ve been preparing freshly baked biscuits’: When Michael D met Boris Johnson >
Read: President Higgins’ historic State Visit, re-imagined in Lego >
