Arbutus - London

The 'nice' squid & mackerel 'burger' with parsley, cockles and sea purslane

I visited Arbutus in London whilst looking for a quick bite to eat. There I was in Frith Street and thought why not?! As you might imagine they were pretty busy but managed to find room for my business partner and I at their bar. This all sounded great and we were offered a drink by the barman who enquired as to what we might be ordering - very nice Irish chap, very friendly and also very helpful when it came to the menu too. He suggested we try a couple of glassed of a portugese red which we were more than happy to do and it was lovely. I ordered the squid & mackerel 'burger' to start followed by the Saddle of rabbit with a shoulder cottage pie and enjoyed some more wine and a nibble on some very nice bread while we waited for our grub.

Along came the starters within good time. I'm not sure what I was expecting but basically the burger was a fishcake. A nice fishcake but a fishcake. The flavours were good, the food well cooked and all in all I quite enjoyed it. I liked the herbs on the side, not sure where the sea purslane was or indeed what is was but the dish was a goodun that's for sure. So, for the main course, I'd gone for the rabbit which was ok, dont get me wrong there was nothing wrong with it but it didnt blow me away. The cottage pie that accompanied the dish was good, lots of flavour but for some reason it felt like I had two dishes.

We supped a bit more wine, chatted to an Israeli chap who was sitting at the bar next to us and had a very good evening. Would I go back? Probably not, not by choice anyway as there are tons of similar restaurants all over the place. I'd much rather go back to Wild Honey, depsite the smelly waiter. The food was much more impressive and left me wanting more.

Marks out of ten? I'd have to give Arbutus a 6/10