So I’ve just left a restaurant where I paid £120 for dinner. I ate alone, drank tap water, and even avoided some of the more expensive dishes. I didn’t go nuts. And it was still £120.
Like beauty, value is in the eye of the beholder. And yes, there’s the argument of ‘well, you can see the prices on the menu, if you don’t like them, don’t go’. This isn’t really the point, of course. The point is, is it worth it?
The restaurant I’m talking about is - obviously - Gordon Ramsay’s new place, Lucky Cat.
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Ramsay’s pan-Asian concept restaurant was launched in a hail of flashbulbs lighting up the top end of King Street earlier this month, with celebs and hangers on in tow. It’s only the second Lucky Cat, the flagship being in Mayfair. There’s not even one in Dubai (yet).
The grandeur of the building - the former Midland Bank, still with the vaults and safety deposit boxes downstairs - far exceeds its London counterpart, which while very good-looking, occupies a townhouse.
100 King Street, by contrast, is breathtaking, sitting in the corner block that also houses the Gotham Hotel. It’s a great hulking hunk of a building, built in the 30s by the same man who built the India Gate in New Delhi and the Cenotaph on Whitehall.
It was also formerly the home of another celebrity chef’s foray into the frozen north, Jamie’s Italian. Things ultimately didn’t go well for Jamie, though it did last a respectable seven years before he put the brand into administration, leaving this amazing building empty and neglected.
Gordon’s concept here is quite a different animal, however. Like the building it sits in, it’s high end, and there’s no getting away from it. The roasted lobster will set you back £86, and the wagyu sirloin is a cold sweat-inducing £90. I’m not sure there’s a more expensive main course in Manchester.
That said, there’s a £35 weekday lunch menu - which runs to a generous 6.30pm - that looks to be great value for three courses.
But this place is geared towards its a la carte menu, which encompasses various Chinese, Hong Kong, Korean, Thai and Japanese influences, from upscale bao buns to sushi and sashimi to expensive slices of creature slapped on a charcoal ‘robata’ grill.
The MEN was treated to a preview of the menu at the start of its soft launch last month. It was the very first day of the kitchen serving real customers, and it was not without problems.
When you’re shelling out this much money for lunch or dinner, there needs to be no problems at all. So as a paying customer, there was some understandable trepidation.
Having a bad meal is awkward. Having one that costs well in excess of £100 per head, without booze, is something else altogether.
Things started with salt & pepper baby squid (£9.50), which is dusted with a malt vinegar powder. It’s a generous bowl, and the squid are soft (not ‘vury rub-reh’, as the man on the next table reckoned). The crumbs that cover them are sharp and tangy, and I press the last of them off the table onto my finger, like the end of a bag of crisps. So far, so delicious.
A plate of aubergine and cabbage dumplings follow (£11), dressed with sesame oil and black vinegar, and there’s five of them, which might cause a row if there are two of you. No such issues today. On top is a fried ‘chilli crunch’ of toasty fried garlic and chilli. The filling could be a tiny bit more seasoned, but they’re clearly homemade and fried crisp. They’re great.
‘Hand dived scallops’ are barely plural. There are two, one of them is a bit small, and it’s £27 for the plate. The only conclusion to be drawn is that Gordon is out there in a pair of tiny trunks, knife gripped between his teeth, diving for them himself. Serving three would take a bit of the sting out of this.
They’re perfectly cooked, however, and delicious. The puddle of yuzu - the Japanese citrus somewhere between a lemon and a grapefruit - they come on is zingy and tart and there’s an unadvertised background spice too, with some charred baby corn slivers draped over the top.
The short rib (£38) is fabulously soft. Cooked perfectly, and you can virtually cut it with chopsticks. It could do with a lash of salt, and once a small bowl of the good flaky stuff arrives at the table on request, it immediately lifts it to where it should be.
It too is excellent, with a sweet-sharp sauce and some inspired pickled baby gem lettuce to cut through the rich beef. There are three slices of it, which for nearly £40 is a little galling. Short rib is a cheap cut, though the process here costs money.
For one person, it’s just about enough, and to be fair, the thought of sharing it would upset me. With the beef comes the much talked about £9.50 fried rice.
It sounds expensive, but if you can eat a whole bowl of it yourself, they should give you your dinner for free, and perhaps a commemorative hat and your name on the wall. It’s wildly rich, and is mixed at the table, a slow cooked egg being blended with all sorts of umami flavours, like XO sauce and bonito (dried tuna flakes).
So far it’s been tough to fault, and a considerably more impressive show than a few weeks back. Dessert is a let down. It’s mango and coconut sticky rice (£13), and the rice is aggressively unsweetened. Like it’s challenging you to say it’s not sweet enough.
Well it isn’t. The mango is fine, but when we’re in honey mango season and they’re available in shops across town, there’s no excuse for it not to be the very best there is.
It was a single misstep in what was otherwise generally excellent. If you have the money for it, have at it. Is it worth saving up if you don’t? The room is fantastic and the service is spot on - neither rushed, nor are you ever waiting too long for anything.
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But be prepared. A few drinks and you’ll rattle past £200 for a couple of people in a heartbeat.
A key question, of course, is is the food on the table any better than what is available in Chinatown, just a five minute walk away, where chefs from China, Japan, Hong Kong and Thailand have been making authentic Asian food for generations? The answer to that is no.
For £120, you could eat at Mr Hong’s on Faulkner Street four times, and be absolutely delighted. But by contrast, you get polystyrene tiles rather than an ornate 40 foot high ceiling, and the service doesn’t often come with a smile. If such things matter deeply to you, then you’ve probably already made your choice. But maybe try the £35 lunch before diving right in at the deep end. Gulp.
