Wednesday 22 August 2012

Dinner at The Mall Tavern

A couple of friends and I decided to go out for dinner and after seeing a couple of reviews of The Mall Tavern I booked a table.  The Mall Tavern is slightly off Notting Hill Gate and first impressions were good.  We started with a cider each and the bartender was very knowledgeable about what was on offer and kindly let us 'sample' some options.

After a short while we were shown to our table and we were immediately distracted from our topic of conversation by the menu. 
The special of the day was pigeon but to be honest none of us fancied that option despite the enthusiasm for the dish from the lovely lady who was serving us.  I think, frankly we couldn't get our brains to move on from the London pavement pigeons we had seen around London! Silly I know but there you go.

Summer salad with whipped goats' cheese & hazelnuts:
This was so pretty it almost was a shame to eat it...almost!

Fried brie with cranberry sauce:
Crispy on the outside, yummy gooey cheesiness on the inside with the sharp sauce to accompany it. Enough said.

Pork pie with a Ploughman's lunch:
Almost too heavy as a starter but the slice of pie was just lovely and not as dense as some pies I've had in the past.  The salad accompanying the pie was zingy with a lemon vinegar dressing and balanced out the pie really well.
Slow cooked beef with smoked beetroots & horseradish:
I didn't try the beef but both of my friends ordered this as their mains and loved it.  Both stated that the beef was melt in the mouth good.

Chicken Kyiv:
A signature dish of The Mall Tavern and it was simply amazing.  In shape, the kyiv was nothing like I've seen before, it was more scotch egg looking then kyiv looking.  Now I'm not a cabbage fan, but once I'd stabbed my 'egg' the garlicky juices that came out meant that even the cabbage slaw tasted amazing.
I didn't get a chance to take a picture of the desserts as we all dived in before I could get my Blackberry ready. The Blackberry recently has been playing up and perhaps due to the sheer volume of things I have on it has been working very VERY slowly!

Cherry & almond cake:
From the little bit I tried the almond cake was gorgeous, dense and packed with almondly flavour.

Arctic Roll (pepper mint, classic and Reese's):
These rolls really we not as good as I remembered them to be as a child.  The waitress did warn us that the peppermint roll tasted like toothpaste and she was right.  However, having said that, this was also our favourite one and the only one we finished.  The ice-cream itself was fine but the sponge bit was just dried out and too crumbly.

Overall, we all really liked our food at The Mall Tavern, we probably would never order the Arctic Rolls again but everything else was just lovely, couple this with a great friendly waitress and we all left with smiles on our faces. 

The bill came to approximately £30 per head including the initial cider, but bear in mind that we didn't order any wine with our food.

This place could easily become a favourite!

Food: 5/5
Service: 4/5
Price: 4/5
Mall Tavern on Urbanspoon

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