Bacchus

Multi course tasting menu £35

This offer is available from Fri Apr 18, subject to availability as displayed in the booking interface. Offer includes taxes and excludes service charge.
Offer valid until Jun 30

Bacchus sits uncomfortably at the 'wrong' end of Hoxton Street, with a very unusual menu and very high prices for the neighbourhood. First impressions are good; lovely staff, stylish Finnish glassware on the tables, retro 1950s school chairs set in a handsome Victorian boozer.

The first cracks appeared soon after I sat down. As I leaned back, the chair loudly snapped, like a gunshot, as its laminated wooden back broke inside, invisibly. The replacement chair was an earlier casualty, and also just kept tilting further and further back. These two antique chairs were fit only for the scrapheap. Which illustrated a simple truth: what looks good on the surface doesn't necessarily work well.

Our dishes also underlined this simple truth. Chef Nuno Mendes has worked at some top restaurants such as El Bulli and New York's Jean-Georges, where he picked up some innovative ideas, before being hired by novice restaurateur
25-year-old Philip Mossop.

The squid dish called 'fresh calamari linguini blanco y negro, black paella paint, candied garlic and lemony mayonnaise sponge' was intended to look creative, but to our eyes looked like a make-up bag tipped on a plate. And it was one of the better dishes - the strips of squid were tender and appealing, even though the black smear of 'mascara' on the plate added nothing but visual effect, and the candied garlic was superfluous. Another starter of 'rabbit mousse in potato leaves with a fluid centre' wasn't recognisable as any of its constituents, though I did identify the cherries marinated in cassis syrup with hazelnuts and seed sprouts. But what, I wondered, is the point of a dish like this?

Bacchus is proud to use 'sous-vide' cooking. This term is used loosely nowadays, and has moved on a lot since the 1980s when it was popular for reheating frozen catering packs. Nowadays it more usually describes slow-cooking of meat at low temperatures, while wrapped in plastic in a controlled-temperature water bath. It's a technique made fashionable by leading chefs such as Heston Blumenthal, John Campbell and their kin; it's also one of the techniques associated with molecular gastronomy (ie the application of scientific expertise to cooking).

My sous-vide sirloin steak 'cooked at 60 degrees' was tender - but it was also deadly dull, as the meat lacked any appealing aroma, brown colouring, or the reactions between proteins and sugars (called the Maillard reaction) that results in appetising meat flavours and smell. Worse still was the slow-poached halibut: it didn't smell fresh. There's no point in using scientific cooking techniques with ingredients that seem past their prime.

Despite the many shortcomings of Bacchus we soldiered on, determined to have a good time. When I later calculated that we'd been charged 17.5 per cent for service (the norm is 10; 12.5 per cent absolute tops), I rang to query this, and was told the mistake has now been rectified (to 12.5 per cent). But this incident epitomised the amateurishness of this restaurant. We'd just paid more than £50 per head for a meal that would flunk a catering school trainee.
Guy Dimond

Time Out London Issue 1888: October 25-November 1 2006

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Latest user reviews

Amazingly inventive food with plenty of fresh flavours and interesting textures which is great value. Set in beautifully converted pub, with plenty of space and atmosphere. You can also spend a few hours over dinner without being rushed out the door. Friendly and attentive service.
simon frost  Sep 17 2007

We were a group of 12 which i realize is sometimes tricky for restaurants, however we booked in advance and agreed to a £30 ph set 3 course menu. Apart from the venue which is (another) identikit pub conversion - this restaurant is to be avoided at all costs - the food is pretentious nonsense... [More]
mark trier  Aug 6 2007