Hare And Tortoise, Blackfriars

Posted by: Excited About Lunch on: September 8, 2013

• In: Blackfriars | Editor's Review
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HARE AND TORTOISE
90 New Bridge Street
London EC4V 6JJ

WEB: http://www.hareandtortoise.co.uk
RATING: 9
WRITER: THE EDITOR

This restaurant came very heavily recommended by my Japanese colleague, who raved about so much on the menu that I propelled myself there with the excitement of a cave woman who caught her first fish.

First of all, when he told me about Hare and Tortoise, I had visions of it being underneath a pub. Let me assure you that it was never a pub and has no links to a pub. It just has a pub name. So now we’ve cleared that up, lets get to the fantastic food on the menu!

In many restaurants that I am dragged to, I only ever see one or two things on a menu that really say “eat me”. The problem with this restaurant is, that you don’t know when to stop ordering. There are so many must tries, that my cohorts and I needed a bigger table.

chilly wing sticks, chinese greens, seaweed, spider maki, veggie spring rolls

Now, I am a woman with simple tastes (haha), all I really need in life is a good chicken wing or a piece of salmon to make me happy (I kid you not). So naturally I had to try their spicy wing sticks; and the fact that they were smothered in chillies, causing my lips to feel like someone had just placed hot coals on them, did not prevent me from going back for more.

The chinese greens and seaweed were a wonderful compliment to the sushi and chicken, but what I had especially gone there to try was the spider maki. This is a seaweed roll filled with deep fried soft shell crab, cucumber, tobiko and lettuce. I could not taste any crab at all, probably because of the deep fried element. So I have to say that I did not enjoy this as much as if it was filled with salmon. Consequently, the soft shell crab hand roll was not as fresh tasting as my usual favourite; the one filled with salmon and avocado.

unagi and avocado maki

And so to the Pièce de résistance; unagi (eel) and avocado maki. So beautifully presented that it deserves a place in the Tate and also quite delicious. I must admit I was surprised that it was so palatable, as the flavour was a kin to that of mackerel. The inside out seaweed roll was filled with avocado and omelette, with the eel on the top. There was a sauce that brought it all together, but I’m not sure what that was. I loved it until the last piece which, I noticed my colleagues avoided, and basically had the tail on top. I don’t know why, after eating a whole eel, the tail put me off. So I had to have a moment before I ate, to cut it into pieces to help me forget what it was.

I must give kudos to my colleagues who managed to polish off a main meal after that as they were served a very large bowl of delicious lakhsa, a gorgeous looking salmon teriyaki and gyudon which is beef with onions in a sweet sauce served with rice. The last one appeared to require more sauce as beef can be quite dry.

The service was excellent as the waiters were very attentive, helpful and extremely speedy. The decor was just as you would expect of a primarily Japanese restaurant, clean and modern with the kitchen in plain sight. We sat a little too close to the kitchen as the seating looked very comfortable, but later thought it might have been better to leave without smelling of teriyaki! But it did have the bonus of getting good service from the waiters. All in all, we loved our Hare and Tortoise experience and would definitely recommend it to others.