One of the hardest parts of any relationship has got to be planning birthdays. What do I buy them? Where do I take them? Shall I just
dump him/her and get back together with them after the day? My girlfriend was recently faced with this conundrum for my birthday, but what made it even more difficult was the daunting task of finding a restaurant fit for a food critic. Bam-Bou was the destination of choice and the meal turned out to be great!
Located just off the foodie haven that is Charlotte Street, the restaurant is housed in an elegant Georgian town-house. The venue is split over four floors and guests have their pick of two dining rooms, three private rooms and a third-floor cocktail bar. Well worn wooden furniture, slight cracks on the seemingly paint-free walls and a few Indo-Chinese influenced wall hangings create an inviting and laid back atmosphere with a charming colonial feel.
The menu is a mixed bag of South-East Asian dishes, with many ingredients taken from the cuisine of Thailand, China and Vietnam. Starters included tasty Pork pancake rolls and a stunning dish of juicy Prawns skewered with sweet sugar cane sticks; these were massively satisfying to chew on once the prawns had been eaten as all of the flavours had soaked through. For mains, the massive bowel of Beef & potato yellow curry was full of succulent pieces of meat, deeply spiced gravy and came with some fluffy rice; by contrast, Miss Pancake’s Red Sea prawns hot-pot with crab, glass noodles & spring onions was one of the most delicate and fragrant dishes I’ve come across, with each mouthful evoking thoughts of the food stalls across Asia. We gave desserts a miss, instead opting for a couple of cocktails in the upstairs bar – the creamy Chocolate martini probably could have counted as a pudding anyway! With starters at around £6, mains for around £13.50 and plentiful portions sizes, Bam-Bou represented great value too.
Well done Miss Pancake!
Food: 4/5
Venue: 4/5
Value: 4/5
Cuisine type – Pan Asian
Dinner for 2 (ex. drinks) – £50
Wine – £4.50
Cocktails – £8.00
Bam-Bou
1 Percy Street
W1T 1DB
Fitzrovia
020 7323 9130
