A place that has won many awards and lays claim to be one of the top 50 restaurants in Europe deserves an in-depth review. Nothing flippant or superficial. This is a first-time review for Chino Latino on Qype, so let's be serious, objective and rational.
Lets begin with the name. What's in a name? Nothing in this case. It's just a trendy bit of hype marketing. CL is the flagship restaurant of The Nottingham Park Plaza, a UK chain of nine big-city upmarket hotels. Three of them have got Chini Latini - London, Leeds and Nottingham. In the UK, the fact that a restaurant is part of a hotel is often good reason for not eating there, but nonetheless the Nottingham site continues to scoop rave reviews and was recently voted a top spot by readers of The Observer newspaper.
CL markets itself as the place to go when you want a laidback meal in glamorous and stylish surroundings.modern Pan-Asian Cuisine with a Latin Cocktail Bar. It is all of this, and sets its prices accordingly. £50 per head is par for the course. So one expects high standards.
Five of us started with a round of drinks at the bar: 2 camparis, a G&T, a Jack Daniels, and a half of Lager: £28, and queue to be served. Nice glasses.
At the table, we were recommended the Set menu at £32, which we ordered with a bottle of white and one of red. Still or sparkling went up the cry, and iced tap came the reply. Starters arrived after 12 minutes - good, but no wine. Halfway through the starters we were told that our choice of white was unavailable, and a hurried second selection arrived 5 minutes later. The starters were exquisite in appearance, arranged lovingly on long white plates to share. By and large they were tasty but nothing better than a selection of mixed starters in your local Chinese. Yellow Tail rolls might have been bought at M&S, and both the rocket salad that accompanied the Prawn Tempura, and the Spinach Rolls, contained grit and obviously had not been washed properly. 5 out of 25 Mussels failed to open; a 20% failure rate is just not good enough. The panfried scallops for some reason came without their orange horns (what is the correct name for these things??). The Seared Marble Beef was superb but scarce in quantity.
The mains certainly filled us up. Roast Salmon and Blackened Sea Bass Fillets were both very acceptable, the Fillet of Beef good but somehow deriving most of its flavour from the accompanying dips, and the cornfed Chicken with Chestnuts tasted authentically free-range. But the inescapable feeling was that it had all just come off the conveyor belt.
The (mostly Asian, urbane yet youthful) waiting staff were never less than accomodating and attentive. A determinedly hip DJ serenaded the diners with good modern music without being intrusive. A bevy of interesting ladies lurked in the cocktail bar apparently ready to mingle. The whole thing seemed forced and unnatural, and we observed that all diners without exception went straight out through the front door after their meal.
We were no exception, and a 15-minute taxi ride back to our own hotel gave us time to vote Chino Latino a 5 out of 10 with a unanimous non-return clause.
POSTSCRIPT, 24 hours later: 2 out of 5 of our party were sick duing the night. Whilst emphasising that this cannot be attributed to the food 100% for sure, the conclusion that we had the proverbial 'dodgy prawn' is inescapable. Rating demoted to 1 star. read more
