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Bo London, Mayfair, No longer with us

As much as I love going to Goodman for an office lunch there are other places to try around Maddox St. Problem is a lot of them are ruinously expensive and lunch should be £30 tops per person. With that in mind I had avoided the new Michelin bait Chinese Bo London as I had heard it was pricey and over-elaborate. However on passing by recently I noticed they were doing some lunch deals set around their Dim Sum menu. My brother and I never need to much encouragement to indulge our passion for Chinese food so off we went for a Dim Sum lunch. The interior of Bo London hasn’t changed much from it’s previous incarnation as Patterson’s. It’s very bare and serious which maybe suits a power dinner in the evening rather than the shoppers and my fellow office drones who made up the clientele when we went. It wasn’t massively busy, about a quarter full but the welcome was warm.

The maitre D explained the Dim Sum menu and told us we had 4 choices each which would end up covering most of the menu. Dim Sum in my opinion is a simple but tasty meal what sets one set apart from the other is the skill in preparing and cooking it and the quality of the ingredients. The flavour combinations were verging on the esoteric here such as a steak and kidney creation but they did celebrate the best of british ingredients done Dim Sum style. My favourite was actually the simplest which was a wild mushroom dumpling which had a strong vibrant flavour and lovely texture. The others were very good possibly not all to my taste such as the chicken pesto spring rolls as I still like the classic versions but they were well made and tasty. Apart from the Maitre D service was a little serious and I felt that maybe struck the wrong tone. I understand that the food is centre stage here but a warm atmosphere complements it.

We had green tea with our meal which was pleasant. The desserts were really very good. Normally I only go as far as a chilled mango pudding but I had a lovely inventive variation on a crème brulee and really lovely lemon and lime concoction. It was a very nice lunch and with their lunch deal it more or less came in a £30 a head. There were some quite sniffy reviews of this place dwelling on the pretension of its tasting menu however based on my untrained opinion they can definitely cook and the food is certainly original but tasty. Maybe the restaurants needs to move away from shock and awe of a tasting menu and concentrate on showcasing it’s good cooking. I would go back.

Thursday, September 12, 2013
Overall rating
Food 8 | Service 7 | Atmosphere 7 | Value for money 8

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