db Eats: The Kitty Hawk

In the market for a big, juicy steak and a nice bottle of claret, db delved into London’s new ‘department store of dining’…

Heavy gold drapes but not much of a ceiling to speak of at The Kitty Hawk

The concept: A ‘department store of dining’ – all your food and drink needs met under one roof. The mercantile spin strikes me as a bit weird but it’s perhaps appropriate for its setting in London’s financial district. I’m just glad they didn’t call it a ‘mall’. The venue’s claim to ‘redefine dining’ by exploring ‘five bespoke culinary experiences under one roof’ sounds quite exciting though we question its use of the word ‘bespoke’. For any of The Kitty Hawk’s ‘culinary experiences’ (namely, bar & kitchen, coffee bar & patisserie, bar, restaurant and private dining room) to be bespoke would mean that what they offered would have to be made to the specific request of individual customers. This clearly isn’t the case. All pedantry aside though, this is a smart-looking venue where the young and thrusting City workforce can ‘grab’ a coffee, a cocktail, a fat steak, or, if it’s a Friday night, each other, without disappointment.

The décor: Patrons are invited to step down into the subterranean restaurant, ‘away from the hustle and bustle of the city’, though not away from the pounding bass of generic dance-pop from the bar above, if you happen to be there on a Friday night. In this vast space (up to 230 covers, my lovely waiter, Victor, said), studded leather banquettes, heavy gold drapes and dark-stained wood point to The Kitty Hawk’s pretensions to luxury. The lack of a ceiling creates a fascinating disharmony to ponder over as you chew on your complimentary sourdough bread (served with delicious olive oil infused with herbs of your choice (bespoke) at your table.

Steak

The food: The menu is short and, if you like steak, sweet. 35-day-aged Ashdale beef from West Country family butcher Alec Jarrett starts at £28.95 for a 12oz rump moving up to £43.95 for a 16oz T-bone. Then there are the sharing options of côte de boeuf (£64), chateaubriand (£69) and tomahawk (£77), plated at your table. These come with beef dripping chips and two sauces (my guest and I tried the mushroom and creamy mustard one (tasty but gloopy) and the Bordelaise one with bone marrow (tasted as if it had balsamic vinegar in it and had a burnt edge –possibly too much charred onion in the stock)) but not sides. The steak was well cooked and of decent quality.

Other meat options include spatchcock poussin, duck leg cassoulet and slow-roast suckling pig (£33 per person to share).

Seafood (from James Knight of Mayfair) is also given special emphasis – we tried starters of scallops, peas and bacon (hard to get wrong, and made me wonder, why is it so unusual to see actual peas, unpuréed, unadorned, on a restaurant plate? Too crude? Too roll-abouty? Too John Major in Spitting Image?) and Brixham crab salad. Mains-wise, salt-baked sea bream with charred lemon and romesco sauce sounds good. There’s also a chef’s speciality pasta and two soups changing daily, and ‘celebrating the finest meat or fish sourced from the market each morning’, the menu says.

For pudding, an individual tarte tatin (made to order, and ‘baked to the original Hotel Tatin recipe’) looked a little shrivelled and meek but tasted very good, and came with a shard of butterscotch, which reminded us of eating the chocolate coating off Crunchies in our lustrous, flower-like youth. An ordered chocolate ice cream, meanwhile, emerged as a sorbet, which was fine because we like chocolate sorbet, though, crucially, not ice cream.

Signature dish: Perhaps the Kitty Hawk Burger, or, for those of a voraciously meaty appetite, the Kitty Hawk Mixed Grill, costing a klaxon-sounding £28 and offering enough prime meat to make Mr Creosote blush.

The drinks: Cocktail lovers are well catered for, with a selection of Kitty Hawk classics (my martini was as cold as it should have been (I like that), though was advertised with an olive and came with a twist of lemon (I don’t like that)) or Kitty Hawk ‘Flyers’ (eg, the Aviation Cocktail – aviation gin, briottet violette, briottet maraschino, lemon) to choose from. There are also ‘Seven Deadly Gins’ served with tonic. The staff wouldn’t be drawn on whether they actually kill people so you’ll just have to take the risk. The wine list has plenty by the glass (175ml and 250ml) and you can even choose a 3l barrel which will be brought to your table. They get a lot of big group bookings so this makes sense for them. There’s a lot of stuff from Domaine Barons de Rothschild, which makes the list a little monochrome, but it’s nice that they offer reasonably priced wine flights – red, white (both £9.50 or sparkling (£13.50). We plumped for a nice bottle of 2010 Château Clarke with our steak. Most of the wines available by the bottle are in the sweet spot price range of £20-£50.

Don’t leave without: Tipping your waiter. We were served by two, James and Victor, and both were charming, polite, helpful and professional.

The Kitty Hawk, 11,13,14 South Pl, London EC2M 7EB