The bar and the dining room beyond are equally clean-lined. You can almost catch the waft of factor 50 in the air after a hot day on the beach. It’s fronted by the kind of big terrace you find outside the restaurants overlooking the sea along the Costa Brava: planters full of mini palms, a string or two of fairy lights, the very big umbrella. Good on flavour: boned and roasted chicken thighs come with romesco sauce. But there is now also La Gamba, an extremely solid and pleasing take on the Spanish repertoire from the team behind Applebee’s, the fishmongers and seafood restaurant operator over at Borough Market. I reviewed the original, so I’ll leave that one to others, save to say I loved their beef and barley bun and their brown butter and honey custard tart. The team behind the terrific Marksman pub in Hackney have opened Lasdun inside the National Theatre. Happily, things are now looking up on the South Bank. Hence, when asked the restaurant question, I would direct people to Borough Market a 20-minute walk to the east, or across Waterloo Bridge to the edge of Covent Garden 15 minutes away to the north. That place just isn’t the Southbank Centre. Obviously, all of those also have their place. If that offering matched the restaurants around its base, it would be touring productions of West End musicals, Metallica tribute bands and Jack Vettriano exhibitions. The Southbank Centre – the Royal Festival Hall, the Queen Elizabeth Hall, the Purcell Room, the Hayward Gallery and so on – prides itself on programming a broad, eclectic and diverting selection of contemporary art, culture and music. Start with squid: a heap of chipirones with lemon aioli. And here it all is, in a prime spot, overlooking the Thames. Landlords are always more likely to go with one of the chain operators than an independent scraping funds together, especially given the current challenges to the hospitality sector. When a site comes up on a high street one of this lot will bid, and that bid will usually be better than that of an independent restaurant operator and come with less risk. It’s meant as an insult to all the other ones.Īs ever, the biggest problem with the midmarket chains remains their financial heft. This is not meant as an insult to all the valiant independent restaurants of Guildford. In a grinding, it-must-be-a-Thursday-evening-in-Guildford sort of way. None of them serve the best version of the food they advertise. I have nothing against any of these, or at least nothing too spittle-flecked. But it’s a bafflingly dreary proposition: there’s a Wagamama, a Côte, a Strada, a Giraffe, a Las Iguanas and so on. There are rooms with tables and chairs where food will be brought to you in return for money. La Gamba is the answer to an infuriating question, that question being: where can I eat before seeing a show at the Southbank Centre? There are, of course, restaurants in that part of London. La Gamba, Unit 3, Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre, London SE1 8XX It’s showtime: the dining room at La Gamba, on London’s South Bank.
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