Caviar - made in Britain, and yours for a fiver Scandal has come closer to home recently too. In a high-end horsemeat-style farrago, since last month one importer, King's Fine Foods, is being investigated after some of the caviar it had supplied to Harrods and Fortnum & Mason was found to be not sevruga - the roe from the Acipenser stellatus breed of sturgeon - but "sterlet caviar": roe from Acipenser ruthenus. It was Denning who spotted the difference and alerted Richmond council. King's said that it bought the mislabelled caviar in good faith from a supplier in Italy, a claim that Denning pooh-poohs. My assistant Harry was a complete novice until he joined the business in January last year; now he can spot all the caviars by sight. If you have been in the game 20 years you are going to know the difference between one caviar and another. The resultant slanging match on Twitter became known as Caviargate and has resulted in Denning losing some contracts. He is unrepentant. Mind you, he has plenty to be optimistic about. A test batch of the British caviar earlier this year garnered rave reviews from chefs including Alan Bird at Bird of Smithfield, Michel Roux Jr and Nathan Outlaw. The secret, says Denning, is not so much the roe as the Cornish sea salt it is processed with. There is no more of the British caviar until harvesting starts again in the autumn, but Denning gives me some German caviar which has been treated identically to the British. And it does taste different. While the other caviars are nutty, like the medium-sized beads of osetra, or earthy, like the larger beluga, the Cornish sea salt caviar is medium-grained and has a clean, minerally flavour, like a walk along a breezy seashore. As for my dismissal of caviar as elitist, Denning showed me tiny tins of imported caviar he plans to sell for less than a fiver each. Each is barely bigger than a £2 coin, but there's enough to add a little dab of the intense black pearls to a platter of canapés or to stir through a luxurious sauce for fish. Not so extravagant. Caviar to the general, indeed - the general satisfaction of everyone. All in a roe: a bluffer's guide to caviar Traditionally, the best caviar is beluga (from the Russian word bely, "white" - this denotes the colour of the fish rather than the eggs, which vary from very pale to nearly black). This is taken from the European sturgeon, Huso huso. Next in line is osetra (Russian for "sturgeon") made from Acipenser gueldenstaedtii or A. Baerii; it's the colour of London bricks, with a slightly nutty taste. Sevruga, harvested from A. stellatus, is greenish black. There should be little or no oily seepage around the eggs, and they should be whole, with no broken or squashed ones, and stay in place even when you turn the spoon 90˚ Arm yourself with a non-metallic spoon (mother of pearl is traditional) as metals (apart from gold) are said to taint the flavour. Slurp the caviar straight off your hand:no blinis, no chopped egg, nothing to dilute the experience. Drink vodka rather than champagne. The flavour should be intense and long lasting, with no muddiness. Young beluga can be a bit musty. Caviar generally does not go "off" in the conventional sense unless it has been poorly processed, but a bitter tang, or a pronounced "egginess," can denote caviar that's past its best. If you're worried about sustainability, look for the CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species) code on the base of the tin. London Fine Foods has a good explanation of this on its website. Cornish sea salt caviar will be available from London Fine Foods in the autumn; londonfinefoods.co.uk