Girls Dinner @ Hakkasan - What's Katie Doing?

Hakkasan – super shiny

My fare ladies decided to continue our girls dinners with an early dinner at Hakkasan mid week. We found a £35 Taste of Hakkasan menu, which includes 3 courses and a cocktail – not a bad offer!

A sample of the cocktails we tried

The restaurant interior

When arriving at the original London Hakkasan off of Tottenham Court Road you go down a dark stairway, past the blue lit reception area, into a dark and moodily lit space with the bar at the back.

Beautiful sculptural lilies in the reception area.

The menu – 3 courses followed by tea and including a cocktail

From top left, the Lychee Martini, the Strawberry and Basil Martini, the Chinese Mule and the Floating Goddess.

A selection of our savoury foods – the Dim Sum and Crispy Duck Rolls for starters, Roasted Silver Cod and Pipa Duck.

Desserts were selected from the main menu – I can recommend this chocolate one!

Mmmm chocolate, and raspberry and honeycomb!

The Hazelnut bombe

So what’s the verdict?

As you can see the food looks amazing & tasted amazing too, I was only uncertain about the sauce with the Roast Silver Cod, but that wasn’t my dish!. Unfortunately the dinner was let down by the service. With a Michellin starred restaurant I expect a certain level, certainly not what we received.

Not only did we get told that the Taste menu wasn’t for those that were hungry – a suggestion that we literally were not going to get enough food, but also the impression that we were being looked down on for choosing this option – staff repeatedly walked into me when serving or clearing the table (it’s not that dark in there surely?!) and food didn’t arrive at the table at the same time.

I can’t excuse any of these issues when I’ve been to similar caliber restaurants (Roux at the Landau and Maze) on similar deals and been treated superbly, so this is something that Hakkasan should work on for all levels of client – not just those dropping £700 for dinner for two (true story, but it wasn’t me!).

And the staff member was wrong – we had plenty of food and left feeling stuffed, especially after a pot of tea post dessert.

However as part of the deal was to eat early, we were out and ready to continue the evening for a while, so we headed up Charlotte Street to Vagabond Wines.

The deal with Vagabond wines is that you can buy wine by the glass or bottle to drink in, or take away, but what makes it different is that you do this via an enomatic machine – i.e. a big wine dispenser! You load up a smart card with money and then you can try any of their selection of red, white, rose and sweet wines, either a sample size or a full glass, read more about it here.

A selection of the wines I tried… I managed to drink through £20 of tasters!

We had fun sampling the huge selection and having a gossip over a couple of hours. Vagabond also serve food and nibbles so if you are on a tasting mission you can line your stomach.

Well worth checking out if you are in the area and either need a wine bar or a bottle of wine to take away!

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Comments

Sarah Ann says

June 3, 2015 at 10:25 pm

The cocktails look AMAZING and I love the lillies. Your photos are so nice! Love the layout and style of your blog.

Sarah xx

thingssarahloves.blogspot.co.uk

Katie Hughes says

June 4, 2015 at 7:54 am

Thanks Sarah! It's definitely worth trying the cocktails, I loved the lychee martini and the Floating Goddess ones.

Emma Moore says

June 4, 2015 at 10:25 am

Ooh this looks fab, I must go!

Katie Hughes says

June 4, 2015 at 12:13 pm

Emma – you should go for the Dim Sum lunch, Giles Corren recommends it and prefers the lunch over dinner at Hakkasan.
Definitely try the cocktails – we worked our way through the specials list after our free cocktail!
x

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