Longboard Italian evening at Whole Foods Market, Giffnock

We were lucky enough to be invited along for Whole Foods Market, Giffnock’s new monthly night called Longboard. The launch night was Italian themed, and we were treated to a whole range of amazing food.

Longboard Italian Menu

You can read a really detailed description of all the food on their blog, Longboard Giffnock. The idea is that the event encourages sharing from platters and meeting lovely new friends. We had the pleasure of sitting next to Fiona from Eaty Tweety and her husband and I’m glad to report there was no fork-stabbing incidents fighting over food!

After enjoying our welcoming glass of a peach prosecco bellini (yum!) we were then treated to our first longboard – salumi.

This is pretty much my dream dinner. Had we not had to share (or have more food coming) I could have happily grazed on this for a few hours! Everything was delicious and thankfully, the food we didn’t get to eat was boxed up for us to eat the next day.

One thing that really makes Whole Foods stand out to me is their wonderfully friendly and helpful staff. All the items were explained in detail, and they quickly answered any questions we had.

Amalfi lemons with mozzarella

Ohhhfttt these were a real surprise. The cheese popped out of the lemon skin, and was lightly lemon flavoured, but still packed a real mozzarella punch. I really want to learn how to make these as they would be a great and unusual starter!

Insalata – olive, bocconcini & cherry tomato dressed in olive oil with rocket & Parmesan

This is just the refreshing salad we need – a perfect palate cleanser before the main. Also, I loved this salad for it’s extreme simplicity and goes to show that a delicious, healthy salad can be thrown together in just a few minutes with some really fresh ingredients.

Lemon, fennel and marjoram rubbed roast chicken, rosemary & sea salt baby roasts, chilli and herb spiked roasted vegetables, ricotta mushrooms

There were four portions on the longboard so sharing wasn’t required for this course! I loved the chicken but the vegetables were the real stand out of this course. The first thing I ate was the mushroom and it had a really punch of chilli to it, which was a surprise as I was just expecting it to be cheesy. I loved it! Then the potatoes – they were served on a carrot and vanilla purée which was beyond heavily – another item I want to learn to make at home!

Desserts – sweet tarts

Graeme skillfully managed to cut these tarts into four so we could all try all of them. This dessert was the perfect finish to the meal – to be honest, I was totally stuffed by this stage so wouldn’t have been able to eat much more! We were also treated to dark chocolate squares, a glass of marsala (which I wouldn’t normally drink, but loved with the chocolate!) as well as an espresso. It was either the espresso or the fun that kept me awake for hours afterwards!

We had such a great night. It was really a lovely experience to dine at Whole Foods (what other supermarket could you say that about?!) and fun to meet awesome people to share it with.

There will be another Longboard event in September – Whole Foods will be announcing it this week! So keep your eyes glued to their facebook page as I’m sure it will sell out quickly.

The Glasgow Food Blog dined as guests of Whole Foods Giffnock.