Futurist feasts that go way beyond food

LONDON: More than 100 well-heeled diners are sitting in the august British Library, eating a fennel slice, an olive and a kumquat while stroking pieces of velvet, silk and sandpaper. The scent of cloves wafts around the room as an airplane engine roars. And this is just the appetizer.

The main course of this unusual banquet is "Alaskan salmon in the rays of the sun with Mars sauce". Dessert is Elasticake - a fluffy pastry ball oozing blood-red zabaglione and crowned with quivering licorice antennae.

Welcome to the weird, sensory world of the Futurist Banquet - an eccentric but strangely influential combination of culinary experiment, political statement and artistic stunt served up at the library recently for an assortment of food-lovers, artists, academics and diplomats.