Dinner at Dinner

When The Boyfriend called and said ‘don’t repeat anything I’m about to say, just listen and say yes or no’ I thought he was about to reveal his secret identity as a MI5 agent and that I was to whisked away like a bond girl on thrilling chase through London…  but alas it turned out he just wanted to check ifＩwas free for dinner on Wednesday because he had found an available table at Dinner by Heston Blumenthal, which was meant to be booked up until July!

Fast forward a week and here we were at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel, 15 minutes late for our table.  I was expecting the front house to tell us that we only had 1 hour and 45 minutes left for our booking but instead she was all smiley and showed us to table next to the window.  I whispered to The Boyfriend ‘don’t we have a time limit on our table?’ The Boyfriend looked at me unconvinced and said ‘hopefully not’.  I was impressed already as a lot of restaurants these days only give you a two hour slot for dinner but Dinner allowed you to enjoy your meal at your own pace – great!

Dinner is one good looking beast of a restaurant.  The mellow yellow lighting bouncing off the high ceiling looked classy and for my money, very masculine – apart from the jelly mould lights on the wall that is.   I loved the complete opened kitchen on show.  You could see the chefs working away calmly and neatly nothing like other commercial kitchens I have seen in action.

Starters

Starter menu

The menu was simple and yet exciting.  We decided to share a starter, so we could have two desserts later.  I know a lot has been said and blogged about the meat fruit dish already but it was simply the most beautiful dishes I’ve ever seen.  Words couldn’t possibly describe how amazing this thing was… so you better get down there and try it yourself!

Main

Main menu

As soon as we turned to the main we couldn’t take our eye off the Wing Rib of Black Angus, so we asked the waiter how big the steak was… and he brought one to show us and it was MASSIVE!  So there was our main decided!

The steak

The steak now cooked!

The steak didn’t fail to impress.   The boyfriend had managed to ‘capture the moment’ with the pic below.  Now I wasn’t about to include this pic for obvious  vanity reasons, but looking through our snaps,  a picture of me gorging my face on the beef rib without a care for the expensive WHITE designer dress probably shows how friggin good that beef was!

Forget the white designer dress

Accompaniments of triple cooked chips, mushroom ketchup and the red wine sauce and even the side order of carrots were also delicious.

Dessert

Dessert menu

Since we heard so much about the Tipsy Cake we decided to order one and another dessert later (the tipsy cakes take 30 minutes to cook so it’s better you order it with your main).

Pineapple grill

We also ended having Brown Bread Ice Cream along with the tipsy cake.  The ice cream was really nice (though I wasn’t keen on the yeast caramel base) but the star was of the show was definitely the tipsy cake.  The cake looked perfect but it was the smell that melted me away.  I thought I was in love!

Tipsy cake & brown bread ice cream

To top the wonderful meal we ran into head chef, Ashley Palmer-Watts on the way out and he even invited us for a photo – OMG!

The Boyfriend and I and Ashley

Rating: 11/10

Dumplings Legend

I’ve recently read a good review about this place and since I’ve walked past it so many times I decided to give it a go.  I went with two friends for dinner a couple of days ago and I was left more than slightly disappointed.

Nice front

Given that the place was named after dumplings, I was eager to order some to show my friends what traditional Chinese dumplings were like.  To my disappointment, they didn’t have dumplings on the menu, instead they had Xiao Long Baos, which are stuffed Shanghai buns.  Was it that difficult to get the name right?  Dumplings are dumplings and buns are buns, they are different things.  Dumplings originated from Beijing whilst Xiao Long Baos are from Shanghai, they made in completely different ways.  It’s like calling a haggis a Cumberland sausage… this has already got me started on the wrong note.

Xiao Long Baos making station

Chefs making Xiao Long Baos

I scanned down the menu and was left confused… because most of the dishes were Cantonese, but there were some Malay curries and some Szechuan cold starters.  I really didn’t know what to order, so I suggested we order something my friends haven’t tried before.  So we ordered vegetarian Xiao Long Baos, drunken chicken, Malay chicken curry and a vegetable dish.

Vegetarian Xiao Long Baos

Eaten with rice vinegar and ginger

Drunken chicken

Malay curry

To be fair, the vegetarian Xiao Long Baos were nice – they were well made, nicely seasoned and had tasty filling.  But rest of the dishes were just bog standard China town. I had hoped with the opening of places like Bar Shu and Empress of Szechuan (though both Szechuan style food) signalled the arrival of more authentic Chinese food but Legend just felt like a step backwards.  (sigh….)

To finish the meal off, when the bill came it was headed “Golden Harvest” – seriously could you get anymore careless… I at least expected the name on the bill to say ‘Dumplings Legend’ not the old Chinese restaurant that was once here and had shut down two years ago!

Thank you for eating at... errr... what was that?

My friends were left unimpressed too and had set me a challenge for a better suggestion next time – sorry!