Worton Nights: Gastrophysics 2.0, 28th March

We are delighted to announce that Professor Charles Spence is returning to do an encore of the show he first gave last May. A mixture of discussion, demonstrations and the odd “experiment”, this interactive evening will give those of you who missed his earlier show a chance to explore the world of taste and our senses with one of the world experts in the field. Based at the Cross Modal Research laboratory in Oxford, Charles has worked frequently with chefs around the world including Heston Blumenthal, Ferran Adria and Kitchen Theory’s Jozef Youssef. Charles will be be speaking about Gastrophysics and explaining some of the myriad factors that affect the way we experience the food we eat.

The evening will begin at 7pm with drinks and a chance to chat with Charles.  We will then serve a 3 course dinner interspersed with talks and experiments to make you change the way you experience tastes and flavours. Dinner itself will be the usual delicious Worton fare but will be edited to illustrate some of the ideas being discussed.  The evening will finish around 10pm.

The cost for the evening is £40 to include dinner and a signed copy Charles’ latest book, Gastrophysics. As ever, tickets are available at the farm from David or Simon. Additionally, you can now buy tickets direct from Eventbrite by clicking the link below.

A ground-breaking book by the world-leading expert in sensory science: Freakonomics for food

‘The scientist changing the way we eat’ – The Guardian

  • Why do we consume 35% more food when eating with one more person, and 75% more when with three?
  • Why are 27% of drinks bought on aeroplanes tomato juice?
  • How are chefs and companies planning to transform our dining experiences, and what can we learn from their cutting-edge insights to make memorable meals at home?

These are just some of the ingredients of Gastrophysics, in which the pioneering Oxford professor Charles Spence shows how our senses link up in the most extraordinary ways, and reveals the importance of all the ‘off-the-plate’ elements of a meal: the weight of cutlery, the placing on the plate, the background music and much more. Whether dining alone or at a dinner party, on a plane or in front of the TV, he reveals how to understand what we’re tasting and influence what others experience. Mealtimes will genuinely never be the same again.

‘Truly accessible, entertaining and informative. On every page there are ideas to set you thinking and widen your horizons’ – Heston Blumenthal, OBE

‘His delight in weird food facts is infectious…fascinating’ – James McConnachie, Sunday Times

‘Gastrophysics is packed with such tasty factual morsels that could be served up at dinner parties. If Spence can percolate all these factual morsels to the mainstream, the benefits to all of us would be obvious’ – Nick Curtis, Daily Telegraph