Tables of temptation in the Garden of Eden

Once again the Eden Project in Cornwall is doing things differently. Not only can you eat good quality food from local ingredients in an odd setting (inside the bubbly 'biome'), now you can sit next to the chef.

Well at least at the next table. It's not unusual these days for chefs and food preparation to be on show, but at Eden the cooking is very much centre stage. The source of some of your food is growing just outside the biome, and the food is prepared in the middle of the eating area.

You can watch pain au chocolate being rolled and baked,

or pizza dough kneaded and decorated with bits of animals and plants.

Outside there are pasties, a touch of Cornwall, sold from a mobile kiosk.

In the next biome, you can enjoy Spanish paella amid the Mediterranean garrigue (you look it up!).

It's all good fun and a great way to enjoy food while learning about plants and people, pretty much the byline for Eden. Another interesting innovation is choosing your food, eating it, then trying to recall and recite your meal to the cashier. Very trusting and also very Eden.

Lynda and I were visiting Eden in the lead up to Guy Fawkes Day and Halloween, and there was some food you couldn't eat. It seems that the Halloween pumpkin has taken root more strongly in the UK than in Australia, but of course we all go where the US leads (I gather turnips used to be the vegetable of choice in the UK, the home of Halloween).