Restaurant Review: Babylon at Kensington Roof Gardens

Following on from my review of Côte restaurants this week, I wanted to tell you about another brilliant restaurant I recently visited with my friend Alex. Now I don’t want people to think I spend my days lunching at fabulous restaurants (I wish!), but we went to Babylon at Kensington Roof Gardens during London Restaurant Fortnight and so managed to get an amazing deal for lunch. London Restaurant Fortnight normally occurs in March/April and is brilliant because it lets you dine at some top restaurants that you might not normally be able to afford unless on a special occasion, but for much much less. The deal we had was a two-course lunch for £15. 

 

I am sometimes hesitant to go on these ‘cheap’ set menus at the more high-end London restaurants as you often get seated at a table in the corner by the toilets, there is limited menu choice and you generally get treated like second class diners. Babylon, however, was exceptional both in the service and the menu choice. I have always wanted to go to Kensington Roof Gardens so I had high exepectations as we arrived in the lobby just off Kensington High Street. It looked more like we were entering an office block than a posh restaurant/bar, but we were immediately greeted by a lovely receptionist who led us to the lift and told us where to go when we arrived upstairs. Again, when we got up there we were greeted by the maître d who took our coats and led us to our table; in fact he let us choose our own table so we were lucky to get one right in the window with views over London. I was impressed with this as he clearly knew that we were on the cheaper set menu! Our waiter was an old school-type and was great, recommending a wine to drink that was reasonably priced and bringing us complimentary bread while we looked at the menu. I find you rarely get complimentary things when you are not ordering from the à la carte menu.

Now to the menu. We were pleasantly surprised that each course had a choice of four dishes, and we both decided to go for a main course and dessert. Both of us chose the roasted chicken with Shiitake mushrooms, Ragout shallots and Madeira cream sauce, which was absolutely delicious and not a small portion either! For dessert, Alex had the crème caramel with Calvados compressed apples and I had a dark chocolate mousse with caramel ice cream, which was homemade and tasted divine. We ordered coffees to finish the meal, which arrived with a selection of petits fours in the cutest little box (below), another nice touch even though we were on the cheaper set menu. We were not hurried or made to feel like we were not proper customers because we were dining off the cheaper set menu; in fact looking around at most of the other tables a lot of diners were on the Restaurant Fortnight set menu. There was a relaxed and pleasant vibe to the restaurant and we were made to feel very welcome.

I would definitely recommend Babylon at Kensington Roof Gardens if you find yourself in the area, or are looking for somewhere to have a special lunch as they still do the set menu at the slightly higher price of two courses for £20 or three for £23. In fact I will be taking my Mum there the next time she comes into town. With the fantastic service and the little attentions to detail, it is definitely worth spending that bit extra, not to mention the fantastic views over London. 

Babylon Restaurant at Kensington Roof Gardens, 99 Kensington High Street, London, W8 5SA. Access is via Derry Street. W: www.roofgardens.virgin.com T: +44 (0)207 368 3993. Images from the Babylon website.

I’ll get my Côte...

I’m not a massive fan of chain restaurants so I'm lucky that we live in a part of the country where there are so many great one-off, independent pubs and restaurants, which I would much rather visit. However, my experience at Côte might just have changed my mind. Recently I have noticed a number of Côte restaurants springing up around North London, with the latest one having just opened in Camden, and I wondered if they were any good as they seem to have gone from nowhere to everywhere in the last 6–12 months. My Mum has been a couple of times to the one in Guildford with her friend and has always sung its praises, so when we went shopping together yesterday in Reading (my hometown) I suggested that we try the new one that has just opened in the main shopping mall, The Oracle.

Côte Reading (image from the website)

It was very quiet when we arrived just after 1pm, but I would put this down to it being a Monday and the fact that the restaurant is not in the main thoroughfare in Reading. However, we were greeted straight away by a very pleasant waitress who told us we could choose any table to sit at (this always scores highly in my book!). The decor is smart and not as in-your-face as some chain restaurants; it really does have an air of chic parisian bistro (proper napkins included!).

There was a special lunchtime menu (until 7pm) which was £9.95 for two courses so we both decided to have that as the choices sounded amazing. I had pork, duck and chicken terrine with toasted sourdough and cornichons, Mum had whitebait and we both had salmon and smoked haddock fishcakes with spinach and a poached egg on top (we also had a side order of frites to share but I'll probably get told off for mentioning that!). The portions were very generous seeing as we were on the cheaper menu, and we both felt nicely full at the end. We also ordered a glass of Sauvignon Blanc each as a treat, which was very reasonably priced at £4.95 a glass (house wine is £4.30), and were also offered complimentary filtered water in a lovely bottle.

The à la carte menu is also very tempting, with prices between £4.90 and £7.95 for starters including tomato and black olive tart, calamari and tuna carpaccio. Mains are between £8.75 (for mushroom and gruyère cheese crépes) and £17.95 (for a fillet steak), so you probably wouldn’t go here if you wanted a cheap ‘I can’t be bothered to cook’ dinner. For a something a bit more though I think it is great value for money, particularly in comparison to most London prices. 

So I will definitely be going back to Côte - I have been told that the chicken and walnut salad is amazing so I have to try that next time, although I will also have to secretly order a side of frites of course!