Amelia Watkinson
Google
My experience here was a mixed bag. I had walked past many times and thought that it looked like a really cool, vibrant place that I was excited to try, particularly as they had Gorka as their guest chefs and the menu looked incredible.
I visited with a friend and we ordered the following:
Potato fondant £7
Green curry dumpling £10
Squid £16
Malted toast £10
I am not a chef, I know that overheads in London are challenging, and how the menu is priced is likely similar to equivalent culinary projects. Nonetheless I found it cast a cloud over an otherwise lovely evening because it did not seem to be in line with the portion sizes and ingredients used.
Everything appears to be made from very accessible and affordable ingredients, and while I appreciate that skill and labour are required to transform them into their final forms, it seems realy crazy to me to get three pieces of squid, potato and onion (which are often considered poor food) in the squid dish for £16. The dumpling was also somewhat undercooked in the middle, and we all know that this is just made of flour, which is perhaps the cheapest of all ingredients. The potato fondant was good but it's just two small pieces of potato (plus the lovely sauce, but I am struggling to find £7 worth of food here). The malted toast was lovely but incredibly caramelised to the point of being hard to break through, and honestly the texture when I managed to break off a piece with my spoon was just toast. I suppose at least it was not missold! But overall, this all felt like the emperor's new clothes of food - very inexpensive ingredients in small portions for an extortionate markup.
I wrote all this to Jazu in an email where I requested some price transparency in light of the disparity between the affordable ingredients and the hefty markup, but have not received a response (3 weeks since the date of writing at this point).