Restaurants

By Guy Dimond

Vanilla Black has just relocated from York to the heart of London's legal district, and the look and atmosphere is suitably sobre; all our fellow diners were besuited. The menu echoes Modern European menus outside London, exploring influences from Indian to Japanese, with dish presentation that's as smart and tidy as a solicitor's files.

The menu descriptions on the other hand are no more reliable than a crim's testimony at the Old Bailey. A 'vindaloo' merely had some spice notes among mounds of baked sweet potato, with a moat of saffron risotto around the base. One dish our waitress described as 'tasting just like gammon and pineapple' didn't. In fact, the smoked duck egg had an imperceptible smokiness, and the dominant flavour was not of pineapple, but of the excessive amount of salt used in the potato croquette. Other dishes were better, though there is a tendency towards pretentiousness with towers (for example of feta cheese), crisped wafers and garnishes, that do not always add anything useful to the dishes. For example, one starter of steamed green beans was served with a tiny preserve jar holding a few green olives - why? The service was good though, and this is somewhere you can take a business colleague without having to fret about which dishes are kosher or vegetarian, because they all are.

Time Out Issue 1969: May 15-21 2008