Tuesday 4 November 2008

Hakkasan.

Dark. Sexy. Busy. Noisy. Expensive. Tastier than expected. No photos either.

That about sums it up.
With no photos to tell the story I will give you a quick run down of what we had.

Thai style quail
: quite tasty and cut into cubes which is not what I was expecting, I thought we would have to grapple with the little birds and their bones. Served with some rather bitter endive leaves which I don't know was by accident or design.

Soft shell crabs: very tasty not too oily, but a small portion methunk.

Salt and pepper squid: tasty, not rubbery would have eaten more

Duck and mango: the weakest of the four, however, still tasty, duck very tender.

All of this was washed down with a couple of their cocktails from what is quite an extensive list.

For mains we shared:

Braised Duke of Berkshire pork belly claypot: this was yummy. The meat and fat became whole and formed some very tasty morsels.

Stir-fry black-pepper rib-eye beef
: this was also good

Sanpei corn-fed poussin claypot
: I had high hopes for this, and although it was tasty it was the weakest of the mains

Stir-fry Mongolian style Vension: also very tasty.

We also had an order of snow-pea shoots with garlic which were yummy and the stir-fry morning glory which was also very good.

As you can see we were quite meat heavy due to my sister's cry of 'Meat!" but on hindsight some of the dishes were a bit samey and we ought to have had some seafood. The menu is here.
All in all, although I enjoyed the food I didn't enjoy the experience. Hakkasan does not make for relaxing or convivial eating. It's too noisy, too dark and you spend your time trying to catch the eye of the harried wait-staff who to their credit seemed to be making a good job of a bad situation. I am pretty sure there are other places in London that produce food of this quality in a more pleasant environment which is a little less heavy on the wallet!! Just need to find them now..

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