Lemongrass

One word : awful. Not sure why they call themselves a Thai restaurant, as nothing I nor my boyfriend had bared any resemblance to this south east asian country. After being coerced into having starters, under the dubious "25% off" deal, I had the chicken satay, which admittedly was edible, albeit accompanied by a peanut sauce, so oily I may as well have dipped it right into the wok oil. My boyfriend went for one of his favourite salads. This however, came with the "pleasant" surprise of being nice and warm! Yes, a lovely warm mush of chicken and chilli in a wilting lettuce leaf. We ate it anyhow, losing faith a little in what was to come....

We thought Pad Thai was a safe choice. Actually when it arrived, it still looked as expected. Illusions were shattered when we took the first slurp - not quite sure how the chef thought he could fool us into thinking soy sauce and caster sugar are the same as a proper Pad Thai sauce, but he gave it a shot. Apart from that, and the vague taste of the lime we energetically squeezed on, there wasn't much else going on. The eggs tasted like they had been boiled in water and then flung on top. It was truly awful. I had prawns stir fried in garlic and pepper, which should really be renamed as "boiled in a light greasy gravy". Not good and definitely not Thai. Morning Glory on the side, looked fine and we were quite happy that we would be able to eat something on the table. except the more we ate, the more we uncovered the dank, wok water at the bottom. Not nice. The dinner kind of ended there. We drank up our flat lemonades, mopped our brows (it was about 40 degrees on there and they were too cheap to put on the air conditioning) and left, £25 poorer. Hopefully the restaurant will read some of these reviews and try and up their game, but it might be more likely it will jut go bust. One can hope.
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0 Overall rating
Food 0 | Service 0 | Atmosphere 0 | Value for money 0
Sunday, June 27, 2010

Having heard rave reviews about Hackney's best Thai, I thought I'd give Lemongrass a go.

The external appearance and decor was wonderful - it had style, looked tropical, skylights at the top, for a conservatory feel, you walked in to smell incense, it certainly lulled you in.

That's where the magic ended. The quality of Thai food that I've had in London has been fairly good - this supposed creme de la creme was the pits.

The starter of minced crab, minced chicken in beancurd pastry was tasteless, with an oily, crispy shell. As for the chef's specialty, steamed, marinated seabass with ginger, plum and mushroom - it was literally the tail-part of the fish, not even scaled, but swimming in hot, slightly cloudy water with one boiled plum for flavour. It does beggar belief to think they could get away with this and it was close to comic after being asked if I was enjoying my food. Endure was a more appropriate word.

The service was good, but all I thought as I stepped back out onto Church Street, was 'Never again!'
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4 Overall rating
Food 1 | Service 7 | Atmosphere 6 | Value for money 3
Thursday, February 12, 2009