Hutong - Shard, London

A special birthday recently meant a lunch time trip to Hutong up the Shard. I had heard that it was expensive for what it is but the view more than made up for it.

Fortunately when we turned up we had a window table, the tables that turned up after had tables set away from the window and looked a bit pissed off. Although the view we had wasn't great especially against comparable restaurants, the area between London Bridge and Waterloo isn't exactly the most impressive in London. We also sat next to the duck kitchen which for many would be off putting, in addition to the cutlery draw directly behind that was rattling through most of the meal.

We started with cocktails, Dragon Tail for me with vodka, lemongrass, honey, sesame and asparagus -yum but having a pretty raw stick of asparagus in a cocktail was a little weird. We also had a passion fruit and mango martini. Note how worn the table looks, it's not as if this is an old restaurant!!

We then ordered the pork belly and cucumber starter which was beautiful and a cracking sticky sauce

We were enjoying this but then all the other dishes came half way though, not sure why as no reason for this. Almost trying to rush our lunch so we left quickly but with a number of empty tables this 

was odd. 

Our mains, were bbq lamb ribs, sweet chilli beef with egg fried rice and fried noodles.

Notice how much of our drinks we had drunk, that's how quick it all came. Normally this isn't an issue for me but a lazy lunch should not be rushed. The positive was the beef which was incredible even for me who eats this dish everywhere I can, but for £26 it needed to be. The noodles and rice were average but again very price. The real negative was the lamb, although warned it was fatty this was something else. For each little piece there was maybe 30% meat. The other half hated the dish, for £31 this was distinctly average, about £3 per minuscule bit of fat! Please avoid this dish, it would 

be overpriced at a third of the price.

We were very full after the meal so declined a dessert but as a nice surprise we received this:

This was a nice touch but the lack of friendliness throughout the meal was noticeable. I expected a clean cut service but it was akin to a local chinese restaurant and clumsy throughout. 

The location of Hutong is special but unless it improves noticeable I will be surprised if this is still here in a year or two. Almost £140 for mains and cocktails is a bit of a pisstake, live and learn!

4.5/10 

Much better was the bar downstairs which we spent the leisurely time we had planned at Hutong. Great cocktail and a lovely view of the city that was missing from upstairs