Hi everyone! Thank goodness the tennis is over for now- it's been distracting searching for jobs while it's been on :) I'm not quite sure how many more posts I'll dedicate to London, but hopefully you're still enjoying reading about these places. It's great to look back at my time there...who knows when I will be in London next time.
For today's post, I will be talking about a very trendy lookin' place called Beach Blanket Babylon that serve "modern European" cuisine. Real-time, online reservation websites like Toptable are awesome because you can always find good deals on particular restaurants. BBB was no exception to the rule as I found a special offer on Toptable for 50% off the 3-course set menu (normally £34.50) at the Shoreditch branch (they also have their flagship restaurant in Notting Hill). I can't exactly explain why I deliberately sought out BBB on Toptable, as the reasoning behind it is more of a inside-joke between my fiancé and I that is not really that funny when said out loud. But we liked the location since it was only a 10 minute walk from our place. Plus it was very handy considering we wanted to go back to watch the Olympics straight after (no TVs in our flats, god bless BBC for online streaming).
Beach Blanket Babylon
19-23 Bethnal Green Road, Shoreditch E1 6LA (Closest tube station: Shoreditch High St)
If possible, both my fiancé and I try to avoid going out during busy periods of restaurant service. This can usually be achieved when I've/we've at least got a plan in mind. Don't worry - I like spontaneity too, but I'm not really one for crowds nor loud places (which therefore rules out clubbing - unfortunately I gotta be drunk or it be someone's birthday to commit to clubbing). This seems kind of strange since Wahaca is the essence of loudness and crowds....but then again, I avoided all that by going there for lunch! So a dinner reservation before 7.30/8pm (depending on the day) is optimal for us. Though these attempts for earlier reservations can no longer work since we're no longer students anymore, so a lot of what I've said is simply a bit of phooey. But 90% of the time, service is more attentive before peak hours and the food won't take so long to come out of the kitchen. By the time we wanted to pay our bill, it became busier and the service of the wait staff were certainly not as attentive as beforehand.
With an earlier reservation, we were fortunate to be given a large table – well certainly a big table for two people, that's for sure – with a nice round booth seating. The booth had a pretty good view of the restaurant and bar. We weren't in a drinking mood, so we stuck to water. Restaurants with large pretentious bottles of water make me laugh, but I was simply glad that they didn't push us to order anything alcohol. It really annoys me when restaurants do that and then try to make you feel bad for not ordering anything. As we were contemplating what to order, we were given a plate of warm bread with olive oil and butter. Warm and not tough, a tick! I'm halfway through Anthony's Bourdain's No Reservations book and he mentions something about the reuse of bread baskets/plates in restaurants.....can I just say that I'm slightly deterred now? Can I be in denial or be naive and say that every restaurants I've been to in the last twelve months (i.e. BBB) don't do that at all?????
Ahem. Anyway.
If you've read my previous posts, you'll know that I like to order differently from whoever I'm eating with when choosing the set menu. That is if there's options within the set menu. I tend to ask my eating companion what they're ordering, which makes it more easier for me to order. I like to try bits of theirs to see if I'm missing out on anything (yes, it goes both ways!). Perhaps that's why I'm such a big fan of tapas.
For the starters, I ordered the salmon tartar with celeriac and fennel remoulade, caviar and cress salad; and my fiancé ordered the baked goats cheese ("goat cheesecake" as they like to call it, which sounds accurate and yet so bizarre) with beets and basil dressing.
I think for both of us the starters were the least successful out of all of the dishes, but we still thought our respective dishes were okay. I preferred mine over his partly because beetroot and I will never be friends, while he enjoyed his more than mine because of cheesy goodness and him not liking the remoulades much. While I did like the salmon, I did think the capers in the tartar overpowered the dish a bit.
For the main, a certain someone thought my decision to order prosciutto wrapped chicken breast with creamy mash and a mushroom & tarragon ragu from the four options given in the set menu was boring. Yes I played it safe, but if BBB didn't know how to cook something as simplistic as a prosciutto wrapped chicken breast, it would have been rather telling about the quality of the restaurant. Luckily it was my favourite dish of the night. Even that certain someone agreed that it tasted pretty good. Everything tasted delicious and was cooked perfectly. The only critique that I could give it would be more mushrooms (of course). I felt guilty that I didn't have any greens, but that was only temporary guilt. It's almost like eating dessert in a way. You know you have to spend forever at the gym to counteract all of the butter and sugar, but you end up not regretting eating it... especially if it's darn tasty.
My fiancé ordered the miso marinated seabass with wasabi mash, bok choy and a soy sherry sauce. He was a very big fan of his dish, like I was with mine. I was glad to see him happy! I did try a bit of the seabass and it was perfectly cooked. Both dishes were perfect portion sizes for mains too. Anymore on the plate and you'd struggle to walk home (you heard that America?!).
Lastly for dessert, there were only three options available from the set menu and one was simply a cheese plate. Sad. Anyway, I went with the french vanilla pannacotta with blueberries and butter biscuits; the fiancé went with the lime meringue cake with blueberries in syrup. Both dishes were good. The pannacotta was smooth and creamy but I preferred the pannacotta with the sauce from the berries rather than the berries itself, as I found the berries extremely tart when eaten with the pannacotta. Yikes.
As for the lime meringue cake, I really appreciated the fact that it wasn't too sweet at all. However, when expecting lime, I expected to taste citrus and yet I don't think I tasted much citrus at all.
The decor of this place is very elegant and trendy looking – it is almost worth it to have a look at the interior design alone. It would have been great to go again and visit the bar, but unfortunately there weren't enough days left for us before our departures to go back home.
Overall the food was pretty decent and great value for money, especially if you consider the fact that the three course meal was 50% off. They do such a deal quite often actually. But the food was better than I expected as I had read many mixed reviews on BBB. One of the critiques I had read was with regard to disappointing service and as I mentioned earlier, it was pretty decent for us up until it became a bit busier, where it dropped in terms of attentiveness. Maybe you just have to go on the right day or roll a dice and see if you're lucky.
Next blog: Eight! Members Club. (We weren't members though).
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