First of all, just a glance at our stars today: the fresh mycelium forms.
The 4 dishes we have today are: closed quinoa ball including kimchi and avocado, open quinoa bowls with avocado paste and with tahini paste, a quinoa mycelium sheet with raspberry and framboise jams topping, and finally 3 framboise jam with small mycelium sheets on top. These are not presented in a certain sequence. Our tasters were free to start from any of them.
They started immediately from the savoury dishes: Marina opened the lip of the closed dish and then everyone started ripping it as the "first course". However this closed ball is the only sample getting "It's nice." as opposed to "Great!" in the rating afterwards. Our lovely tasters apparently liked the fact that it could be open: "Ripping it off is nice and fun", but have a lot of opinions about how to improve the look of it: "Put something on top"/ "Maybe let us see a bit inside". Speaking of taste, this closed ball is really the winner because they liked the 3 different texture and taste made of kimchi, avocado and the mycelium. They loved the softness and bounciness of it as well.
Almost at the same time, they turned to the open bowls with paste. In a similar manner of rip-dip-eat, the two bowls were also finished in a minute. The bright colours make this dish look "Great!" instead of just "nice". There should be more Tahini paste than now. The amount of avocado paste is perfect.
Comparing to their popular mates, two sheets with jams were ignored in the beginning. Right after finishing the first two, Tia asked: "Now are we going to eat the desserts?" Okay, they might have associated the two with sweet food in the beginning. (yes, they are.) They've got nice jam smell, which I assume didn't influence the fact that tasters didn't start from the nice-smelling food. An important feedback about the two desserts is that they have a bitter after-taste because of over-baking. A thicker layer was also suggested, as well as a stack of crispy mycelium served at side of the jam, and a biscuit structure of the combination of jam and crispy mycelium pieces.
As a conclusion:
1. The closed structure of food attracts people visually, but a good-looking topping and allowing people to look a bit inside will make it more eye catching.
2. Ripping off is the most mentioned fun eating experience.
3. Multiple texture make the taste great.
4. Consider about the amount of food carefully next time: the proportion of mycelium and jam/kimchi/paste.