Restaurants

By Guy Dimond

Aqua is brought to us, ‘concept’ and all, from an upmarket chain based in Hong Kong. It occupies the top floor of what used to be the Dickins & Jones building, sandwiched between Regent Street and Argyll Street (home of waffle stalls, teen shoppers and ‘Sister Act’).

Aqua’s entrance, complete with red velvet drapes, is on tacky Argyll Street. A doorman checks if you have a reservation (we did, but he’d not been told) and then sends you to the lift.

On the top floor, a gaggle of giggling girl greeters size you up as you leave the lift. It’s not the most professional of starts. But Aqua aims to be an upmarket fine dining destination, vying with the likes of Nobu or Zuma.

In many ways, it has fulfilled the brief. The series of rooms are decorated like smart, international hotel restaurants – smart, but not cutting-edge design.

There are two dining rooms, one – ‘Aqua Nueva’ – claiming inspiration from Spanish cocina nueva, the new wave of Spanish cooking, and other, ‘Aqua Kyoto’, inspired by Japan. There are also a few bars, and three large outdoor terraces, only used by smokers on our visit.

Aqua Nueva is spacious, comfortable, attractively lit and decorated with woodturner’s offcuts turned into hanging screens.

One side is designated a ‘tapas bar’, and serves a fairly conventional list of tiny dishes. The dining room proper has a more adventurous menu, written in bad Spanish (did anyone well-versed in the language read it first?), with English translations below. ‘Corn soup with beetroot and Monte Enebro cheese ravioli’ is a very loose approximation of the dish which arrived, which was a lukewarm yellow purée of sweetcorn with dominoes of raw purple beetroot set upright in the bowl. The ‘ravioli’ aspect referred to a dab of cheese sandwiched by the raw beetroot.

A fillet of hake was nicely cooked and topped with some chewy bits of squid, but the ‘salsa verde’ described on the menu was as clear and salty as seawater.

Oxtail was the best dish, a neat block of the flesh marinated then slow-cooked, simply served with some nouvelle-style carved vegetables.

But our dessert was a car crash of flavours. Yogurt, ice-cream, cooked apple, apple sorbet,dark chocolate and spun sugar all have their place, but not together in the same dish; the sour yogurt clashed with the delicate ices.

The prices are fair for a smart place with perfectly adequate cooking, but the service still needs to brush up. The waiting staff appeared to know next to nothing about the dishes, or indeed anything about Spanish food or wine.

One chap ambled off to the kitchen to find out the name of the olive oil they were proudly showcasing. ‘It’s Brindisa,’ came the reply – which is the importer, not an olive oil. One senior member of staff confided in us that he had only arrived in London days before the restaurant opened.

I went back to try Aqua Kyoto. It serves set lunches that are fair value, and well-prepared by the Japanese chef – a mixed bento box for £15.95, plus the inevitable black cod with miso at £28.50. Service on this occasion was even more of a shambles. But this is still worth considering for a smart lunch in the area.

Time Out London Issue 2043: October 15-21 2009