Restaurants

By Will Fulford-Jones

The name implies a homage to the US constitution's 18th Amendment, enacted in 1920 and repealed 13 years later. However, the theming of Prohibition, a handsome, glass-walled box under a Tower Bridge office block, doesn't extend to much more than a mocked-up newspaper clipping on the menu. Certainly, if any surreptitious speakeasy cranked its club-ready music to the ludicrous levels that we endured early one midweek evening, the police would sniff them out in seconds. It got softer later, after a guitar-toting duo spent a half-hour trundling sincerely through a bunch of songs you've already heard once too often; this isn't the place for a quiet night. The menu makes great play of the cocktails. While neither knocked us sideways, our Manhattan (made with Maker's Mark bourbon whisky) was very decent, and the speciality cucumber and elderflower Martini carried with it a pleasing delicacy. Still, the presence on the list of four vodka-Red Bull concoctions, some dirt-cheap shooters and an offer to 'pimp your drink!' for an additional quid suggests that sophistication isn't top of the agenda. And so it proves with the food, an unlikely blend of American classics and quasi-exotic comfort cooking such as spring rolls and peri-peri chicken. The food's about as good as it needs to be, which is to say not very. Prefaced by a so-so onion-rings starter and served in a bland bap, the cheese and bacon burger was fine, if a touch dry. However, the over-sweet baby-back ribs lacked charisma and the corn-on-the-cob was stodgily unpleasant. Worst was the signature sundae, a shockingly juvenile fiasco of cheap-tasting ice cream, hundreds and thousands, glacé cherries and tinned pineapple rings. Bartender: something to take the taste away

Time Out Issue 1950: January 2-8 2008