My friend and I were looking for somewhere for a meal before watching Billy Elliiott at the Victoria Palace Theatre round the corner. A quick internet search threw up Browns, which seemed to have a promising looking menu, with dishes like crab and avocado stack and the use of ingredients like truffle oil raising my hopes that the restaurant could break free from its chain restaurant roots to deliver an exceptional plate of food.
I did book a table though there was probably no need to do so as there were a lot of tables available in the restaurant upstairs. The restaurant does have a lovely futuristic feel to it with a lot of glass admitting lots of lovely sunshine in. We were seated by the window, which was lovely.
Our waitress Karina did look after us well, never hurrying us despite some slow ordering on our part. There were some tempting cocktails and mocktails on offer but we stuck to nice mango & passionfuit and apple & lychee juices.
We started with a flatbread topped with prosciutto & chorizo as well as red and yellow peppers. This was a nice starter to share, which wasn't too heavy. The rustic haphazard distribution of the toppings, though making it look homemade, did require some re-arranging so as to ensure that we got some topping with each bite.
For main course, my friend got the crab & tiger prawn linguine, tossed in a lime, chilli and coriander pesto. This was OK but the pesto really needed a lot more pepping up with the lime and chilli to deliver on the flavour hit that it seemed to promise in the description.
I got the slow roasted belly of pork with an orange and cumin glaze, creamed Savoy cabbage, Aspalis balsamic caramelised apple and shards of crispy crackling. By the way, I'm copying this description from the restaurant menu and once again, it failed to deliver on the promise of the description. The pork was a bit dry and there was no real flavour of orange or cumin. The cabbage was overcooked and worst of all for me, the crackling was chewy rather than crispy.
I hope I'm not doing the kitchen a dis-service in questioning whether these dishes were cooked from scratch on-site but they gave the impression that the food had been pre-cooked and re-heated. Unfortunately, it lived up to the stereotype of a restaurant aimed at the less discerning tourist and City trade.
In summary, nice location, nice decoration, lovely service, fantastic menu writer but sadly, the food doesn't live up to the rest of the package at the moment.
There were more eateries around the area than I realised and had I know this, we would probably have just wandered round looking at menus and I suspect we would have ended up at the tapas place opposite Browns read more