Gilgamesh, 4a Higher St Martin’s Lane, London WC2H 9NY. Small plates £7-£19, massive plates £9-£42, desserts £9, wines from £38
A Monday lunchtime, and my cellphone pings. There’s a textual content. “Gilgamesh London. It’s our Birthday! ONE milestone reward to you,” it says, with a dizzyingly random use of capital letters. “50% OFF A la Carte Menu. On-line bookings.” Which is all very good. Besides I’m already booked to go to Gilgamesh. The following day I’m served up a trio of their advertisements throughout this paper’s homepage on-line, providing “3 programs for £20”. It might be described as pathologically needy had been that not an insult to needy individuals.
Gilgamesh is the rebirth of a bonkers restaurant which opened in 2006 inside The Stables at London’s Camden Market at a price effectively north of £12m. It might seat 570 individuals and had a hilariously garish inside of sculptures and gold-effect reliefs telling the story of the Babylonian King Gilgamesh. As each god and man, he smote individuals, constructed mighty partitions and customarily made the climate throughout what’s now the Center East. Subsequently, the meals was pan-Asian. Properly, after all it was: creaky stabs at sushi, dim sum, Thai curries and the remaining. It was finally taken over by Richard Caring of the Ivy group, earlier than closing in 2018.
A yr in the past it reopened on a web site on the prime of St Martin’s Lane which was once Marcus Wareing’s Tredwells. So why my curiosity? I’m a completist, my time on this column is coming to an finish and I merely wanted to know: would Gilgamesh Mk II make any extra sense than the unique? As ever, it is dependent upon your phrases of reference. Regardless of the determined come-hither advertisements and texts, they seem like doing positive. On a midweek night time, the place is rammed. They’ve a non-public social gathering upstairs, so there’s no room within the cloakroom for my bag “as a result of we have now, like, 50 backpacks there already.” You possibly can hear that crowd honking and hooting at one another at most quantity over the mezzanine balcony into the vault on the entrance of the restaurant, the place excessive mounted out of doors heaters have been fitted to fend off a chill. We’re seated beneath their glow, earlier than being moved in order that we don’t slowly grill.
We now have a stunning view of the identical ludicrous gold-effect inside which, we’re advised, is the unique from Camden. Given the cracks, ragged joins and bubbled marquetry on the tables that’s plausible. There’s plastic foliage together with a bay tree, which seems as knackered as I’m already feeling, and a thumping bass line that makes the very air tremble. However look, we’re right here for what the web site calls “a culinary journey impressed by the traditional epic of Gilgamesh, the place East meets West”. Apparently “each sip and chunk takes you additional into the epic story woven inside our restaurant – a sensory expertise that transcends time and cultural boundaries.” Which is good. That immense journey begins with the kind of prawn crackers delivered in a white plastic bag with an inexpensive Chinese language takeaway. They’re accompanied by a salsa made with the flesh of pale pink tomatoes which style of virtually nothing.
The very best dish of the night time is the £16 popcorn shrimp served in a stainless-steel pot the form of a giant martini glass. They’re sizzling and crisp, although after we ask the place the marketed spicy chipotle mayo is, we’re advised airily that it’s been blended in. From the sushi checklist we’re mistakenly introduced a Gilgamesh dragon roll. It’s coated in a skinny, slimy layer of wagyu beef, which has the feel of one thing you would possibly use to salve a burn. After they ship the precise dragon roll we requested for, made with barbecued eel and avocado, it’s stable sufficient. In the meantime, a crispy duck and watermelon salad, with a handful of cashews expertly faraway from their bag and chucked on to the plate, is a catastrophe. The duck and melon are each excruciatingly sugary. The mix can work, however provided that there’s a sharply dressed leaf salad as counterbalance. In any other case, it’s only a bizarre journey to the sweetie store.
There’s then an extended watch for the principle programs, however they had been all the time sure to show up, weren’t they? The least offensive for merely being boring is the grilled, cotton-wool thump of the lemongrass hen, which tastes of little or no together with both lemongrass or hen. Then there’s the meat rendang, which needs to be cooked lengthy and gradual till the diminished gravy has a profound heat, depth and toastiness to it. This one is a sloppy blight upon the dish’s very title. It’s astringent and harsh, as if it had been pressure-cooked for half-hour and left at that. The roti are greasy and flaccid as, by now, am I.
We’ve additionally ordered cauliflower and asparagus fried rice. It smells prefer it’s been made with the leftover cauliflower that comes alongside an inexpensive pub Sunday roast; the stuff overcooked yesterday, in order that it may be eaten right this moment with out recourse to enamel. In fact, asparagus is grossly out of season but when it’s within the dish description, it needs to be there. It isn’t. It’s simply 50% massacred cauliflower. I level this out to our good waiter, who’s coping with the noise and the chaos and a kitchen which doesn’t all the time ship the suitable order, with grace and dignity. He presents to switch it and although we decline, brings it anyway, however by this level we’re carried out.
We’ve tried to take the sting off with a £38 bottle of Spanish Sauvignon Blanc headache wine, the most cost effective on the checklist. It hasn’t carried out the job. Maybe we should always have ordered the Don Julio 1942 tequila at £950 (obtainable on-line for £146). This night my cultural boundaries haven’t a lot been transcended as wildly violated. I’ve certainly had a sensory expertise, simply not fairly the one they supposed. In fact, I’ve made a class error right here, simply as I did 18 years in the past. I got here to a restaurant considering the meals mattered. However apparently it doesn’t, not even when the invoice involves £175 (I’m advised the low cost within the textual content applies solely between sure hours). Lots of eating places are stage units, Gilgamesh it appears greater than most. It’s an area through which to play at having a sure form of watermelon martini-fuelled night time, which isn’t my factor. We retreat to Anita, the ice-cream parlour subsequent door, for tubs of blended berry pavlova and chocolate sorbet, that are my factor. It doesn’t transcend any cultural boundaries. It isn’t epic. However it actually does make issues somewhat higher.
Information bites
Gordon Ramsay’s restaurant group is taking up the location of what was Le Gavroche, which was closed in early 2024 after 56 years by Michel Roux, son of the late co-founder Albert Roux. In line with trade journal restaurantonline.co.uk, Ramsay’s firm has efficiently utilized to take over the premises licence, with the supervisor named as Silvano Giraldin, the legendary maître d’ who ran front-of-house at Le Gavroche for 30 years. The brand new restaurant will likely be a platform for Matt Abé, who has been chef-patron at Restaurant Gordon Ramsay on Royal Hospital Street in London’s Chelsea since 2020. Ramsay was a junior member of the brigade at Le Gavroche underneath Albert Roux within the late 80s.
Ayesha Kalaji, chef-patron of the extremely regarded Queen of Cups in Glastonbury, is bringing a menu of her key dishes to the Intercontinental London Park Lane for Iftar, the meal with which Muslims break their quick throughout Ramadan. The half Welsh-half Jordanian Kalaji, who educated at Leith’s College of Meals and Wine, has put collectively an a la carte menu that features braised pressed hogget with Persian lime and lavender, Queen of Cups laverbread falafel, and a rice pudding flavoured with rose water and saffron. Will probably be obtainable for a month from 29 February. Guide here.
Bathtub BID, the enterprise enchancment group for the town, has introduced the primary ever Bathtub Restaurant Week, which can run from 3 to 11 Might. Hospitality companies within the metropolis will likely be inspired to run particular menus and dishes spotlighting their providing, which will likely be promoted by Bathtub BID. To launch the occasion, and to boost funds for the charity Hospitality Motion, they’re staging a Waiters Race on Monday 7 April. Comply with them on Instagram here for extra data.
E mail Jay at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk or observe him on Instagram @jayrayner1
