Lobster Kitchen, London

The success of Burger & Lobster has bought a new craze of lobsters into London with many new establishments such as Lobster Kitchen, Smack Lobster and etc. You can now have good quality lobsters at an affordable price with many innovative twists, whether it's Chinese style (fried with ginger and spring onion) or American style (stuffed in a roll) or even Indian style.

I went on a dreary cold Friday evening. If you see a queue, you know you're at the right place as it will definitely be for Lobster Kitchen. Waited for around 40 minutes before leading into the restaurant. Once in the restaurant, the waitress mistook a customer's table as empty as they went to order food. So we waited for another 10 minutes inside the restaurant before seated. The place is cramped, like no room for maneuver and the seating arrangement is terrible. Mind you, it's a small restaurant with bar seats on the left hand side, a long bench table in the middle and couple of high bar tables at the right hand side. Me and Mr T was seated at the long bench on the edge, it wasn't easy to get your legs across the bench and there was no room to put down your clothes/bags/etc.

It's a fast food restaurant concept, you go up the counter to order food, they'll give you a number and once the food is ready they will bring it to the table for you. It was another 30 minutes wait before the food was brought to your table. I am sorry, but 30 minutes is unacceptable even if it is just reheating food and plating it up. I ordered the garlicky one lobster roll (chopped garlic sautéed in butter and fresh parsley) along with a lobster mac and cheese. Mr T had a whole lobster with fries and a lobster bisque. The food was just pure disappointment, the roll consisted good amount of lobster but where was the garlic flavour? Was it a brioche bun, of course not. I had to add sriracha sauce to give it some flavour. There was fair amount of lobster in the mac and cheese, the sauce was watery and overcooked. The whole lobster was tiny and there wasn't much meat on it, it looks dried and flavourless. The lobster bisque has to be worst item, it was plain, thin, watery and greyish colour looking. A can from the supermarket looks even more delicious than that. The best thing was probably the fries, can't really go wrong with crispy sweet potato fries.

£20 for 2 people was acceptable but for £40 I would be deeming for a refund. If it wasn't for the half price soft opening, I wouldn't have came especially it doesn't worth the price for the quality that you get. By the time we finished our meal, the couple lined up behind us in the queue was just led to the table (they waited like 1.5 hours, crazy?) and at that stage I wanted to tell them you've wasted your time and I could recommend another better lobster eatery.

Note: We weren't actually full after the meal, went home and had a instant noodle. No photos, the meal was just terrible and the photos do them no justice (didn't take any photos).

Score Rating: 2/5
Price: £10-£20/head (50% off soft opening, £20 for 2 people)




http://www.lobsterkitchen.co.uk/