Wow! Perfection! I genuinely cannot fault this dish. In fact, if anything, the complaint to be made against this restaurant is that it should ditch the flawed ‘Burger and Lobster’ craziness, rename to ‘Lobster Roll’ and be done with it! Oh, and move to a food van, because, frankly, this is blissfully simple, naughty fare, and could easily be sold out of a hatch at a festival.
Where to begin? Well, obviously lobster is delicious, we all know that. But it’s not without its issues.
Firstly, lobster is fiddly. I’m one of those people who fears having a meal of diminishing returns, where you have a delicious mouthful, but find yourself scraping around in claws and tendrils with less and less joy rewarding you. This meal solves this by doing all the hard work for you, and providing all the meat with none of the implements. And there wasn’t a mislaid shard of shell in sight.
“The result was crispy, but melting, delicate but flavoursome, subtle but with real wow-factor. It’s possible this is the perfect sandwich”
Secondly, lobster is just too damned delicately flavoured. Pair it with anything with more taste than soggy cardboard and it can be overpowered. But here they match it with a sourly-sweet toaster brioche roll, fluffy Japanese mayonnaise, and, well, nothing else. It’s paired with chips (or rather, fries), and a small Caesar salad, but let’s be honest, neither of these are what the queues are lining up for.
Thirdly, lobster is expensive. Okay, so I’m more of a seven-to-fourteen-pounds-per-main kinda guy. Well, actually, more seven-to-ten-pounds, but who’s counting? So I could easily have blushed at the £20 price tag attached to this (and the burger, and the simply-steamed lobster), in a way that the clientèle who I shan’t say anything about because, er, I was one of them yesterday, presumably wouldn’t. But along with the fries and salad this was a generous meal, and one that filled me up – so in fact I’d say it was pretty good value, and way above, say, Gourmet Burger Kitchen, where you’d pay the same for a similar amount of food.
The result was crispy, but melting, delicate but flavoursome, subtle but with real wow-factor. I pity the fools who’d asked for the burger (though I love a burger) or the lobster (though I love straight-up lobster), but will have to go back with others to order those so I can have a taste. It’s possible this is the perfect sandwich.
Cocktails, at £9.50 were strong and delicious, but £9.50. Service at the table was super-smiley, but sadly a little frosty before we were seated.
The only (small) criticism I’d level was that the desserts were a real let-down – disappointingly served in cardboard pots from the fridge. Chocolate brownie mousse was passable chocolate mousse on top of passable chocolate brownie served too cold to really taste, and I doubt it would have been especially thrilling even if it had been at a more appropriate olfactory temperature. Desserts, rightly, aren’t where the fireworks are supposed to be in the restaurant, and it would probably be a shame if they stole the thunder. In fact, I reckon they should just not bother with puds at all.
I’ll definitely be back. Potentially often.
10/100 of the best dishes in London.