Tipped

good food, great venue

June 11, 2008

Don’t get me wrong, I did enjoy The Narrow but not overly so. It’s just another pub serving good food; nothing that wowed me expect the wonderful location at the end of the Regent’s Canal at Limehouse, with every seat having a view of the Thames. Pretty spectacular. The service was great too as well as the wine selection, and if you’re an Ale person, this is the place to go (Banana Bread or Chocolate Ale anyone?).

I always set my expectations too high b/c it’s a Gordon Ramsay restaurant. I also seem to think I’m going to have a mind-blowing meal. I need to reset my expectations for his pubs. The food was good, not great. The potted salmon starter was really tasty and huge so you get a lot for your money. My main was decent – a fishcake that has more fish than potato which is always nice but the tartare sauce could have been better. The dessert was the biggest disappointment for me. I ordered the lemon and vanilla cheesecake. Yes, it tasted okay, but this was a refrigerator cheesecake (the no bake kind) which seemed like cream cheese mixed with sugar, lemon and real vanilla over a biscuit crust – a cheap way to make it which takes no time at all and certainly doesn’t test the chef’s baking skills. Being the cheesecake lover I am, I was hoping it would have been the real kind that takes time to make and is baked with a wonderful crust all the way around.

Nonetheless I’ll be back b/c it was good and you can’t beat those views on a sunny day.

Big and British

May 26, 2008

Just adding my 2 cents to the below reviews :) Indeed the Narrow is a great gastro pub. I went as part of a larger party, so we sat upstairs in the private dining room which was lovely and felt a bit like a gentleman’s club room , although having Gordon Ramsay's entire range of cookbooks leering at us from a glass cabinet did spoil the atmosphere a little (You know, just in case you forget whose pub this is or in case you get the urge to buy a cookbook at 10pm)
Still, the food we ate was good old gastro pub classics. Due to our party size we had to choose from a limited menu which was a bit of a shame, but there were no complaints about the food we received. My white onion and wild garlic soup was light yet flavoursome, and my fishcake was packed full of fish and interestingly crayfish as well. I only managed a small mouthful of chocolate tart which was super rich and a slither of cheese before having to crawl off into the night absolutely stuffed but blissfully content. Yes, the location is a little bit off the beaten track, but well worth a visit, especially if the sun is out and you can make use of the lovely terrace. Service was friendly and accommodating and the place was heaving when we left.

Tags: gastro pub, riverside, terrace

Yummy Pub Grub

May 26, 2008

Well Andy has posted a pretty comprehensive review of the Narrow, and I mostly agree with just about everything he said. The pub is lovely and its location is amazing, right smack dab on a corner of the Thames. It is a bit out of the way, so that makes this something of a destination restaurant and that, coupled with the points Andy made about the difficulty squaring 'down home neighborhood pub' with 'outsize personality chef', do provide a bit of a challenge.

Still, the food was great. We had a lot of sharing among the various selections and I found that the starters were a real treat, from the onion and garlic soup to the potted salmon. Mains were pretty good too, sticking with the straightforward pub grub menu. I had bangers and mash which were well done although I find that a lot of British sausages are not quite flavourful enough for me. The beef pies looked tremendous, though. Pudding was a highlight for me. I had an apple pie in custard that I rapidly devoured. Very sweet, but with great texture and good crust (which is key for any good pie). We also all shared a big cheese board which was tasty as well and came with plenty of fixings.

Ultimately I think that the thing with the Narrow is that it has to both provide a proper classic British pub experience whilst containing the character of Gordon Ramsay. The food and the experience at the Narrow was lovely, but because of the imprimatur of Ramsay, it resulted in dressing up ordinary (and tasty!) food that somewhat detracted from the total experience.

Tags: pub grub, views, riverside, good for groups

A Narrow Success

January 06, 2008

Gordon Ramsay made a good purchase when he recently bought and refurbished this historic riverside pub. The building itself is beautiful, and the river views are stunning. The Narrow is a pub to the core, complete with a basic menu and a focus on beers and ciders. True to form for a historic pub, there is also a skinny confusing entrance by the toilets and no clear place to go to find a host to seat you.

The food, in typical gastropub fashion, is essentially standard pub fare done well with some gourmet twists. Everything is nicely prepared, but many dishes could use some balance. The deviled lamb kidneys on toast is an overly generous portion, but could have used some greens, apple/pear, or anything at all on the side to cut the heaviness. The main courses should be ordered with a side of vegetables or potatoes because they come with almost nothing else on the plate. But then again, this is supposed to be pub food, i.e., piles of fat and protein washed down with fermented beverages, and balance is not really a hallmark of this type of food. I still want a salad.

If dinner had ended pre-pudding, I would have left with only a mildly positive impression of the restaurant, but the desserts were so amazingly delicious that I left with a huge smile on my face. Don't miss the bread and butter pudding - the best version of this I have ever encountered - and the cranberry tangerine crumble with vanilla ice cream was also incredibly tasty.

The main problem with The Narrow is Gordon Ramsay himself: The Narrow very much wants to be a neighborhood pub with good food at reasonable prices, but because it is a Ramsay restaurant it has become a destination and reservations are definitely needed well in advance. The trouble is that the food is too basic for all of the attention, and some may leave underwhelmed if they expect a higher class affair. Next time I will probably come back for lunch (better views, easier reservations), as long as they serve dessert.

Tags: pub, river views, riverside pub, Gordon Ramsay, gastropub