45 Great Marlborough Street
W1F 7JL
Tel: 020 7851 6969
Date of Last Visit: Thursday, August 31, 2006
The Victims: Destri, Lee, Kellie
The Damage: 35 quid each (but we paid for Destri, so technically, it was 25 per person)
The Background: So my friend Richard knows Barry, who owns Home Wino. Barry somehow knows the guy that brought Nobu over from the US–the same guy behind Ping Pong. So I ended up at the Home Wino launch party, talking to Mr. Ping Pong. It was cool. My brush with fame.
More Background: Destri just finished her dissertation! So it was time to celebrate.
The Arrival: Totally sucked. Lines out the door. Waiting, wating, waiting. Now supposedly, they don’t take reservations, but I sure heard a lot of people telling the bouncer and the table girls that they had bookings. Maybe these were for large parties. Not sure. We waiting a little less than an hour. And the bummer part was that when we finally got inside, they told us that we were actually waiting for the BAR, and we’d hang out there until a table was available in the restaurant.
Seated, Finally: Randomly, they told us we could have a table, but we’d have to share it. This was TOTALLY fine with us. We were starving. So we were shown downstairs to a nice round table, and we quickly took over half of it.
The Drinks: DELICIOUS. I had a blackberry cognac and it was like a smoothie almost. Yummy.
The Food: You place your own orders, which is fun. We selected 3 to 4 dim sum portions each, and the food quickly began arriving. Most delicious were the ribs. The meat just fell off the bone. And then we had dumplings galore. And rice wrapped in lotus leaves. (I think we over-ordered on the rice–two portions each was too much.) I loved everything. I love dim sum. I love dumplings.
The Service: Brisk. Efficient, except when it came time to ask for the bill. That took a while.
The Verdict: I would go back. For sure. A cheap date.
