Unless you were off Instagram all last week, you can hardly have escaped the opening of Kerridge's Bar & Grill at The Corinthia London. In advance of our upcoming full Test Drive we popped back there last weekend to have a crack at the bar menu.
There's actually quite a large, separate bar at the restaurant with its own bar snack menu. And given how busy the actual restaurant was on Saturday night, this could be an easier, entry-level way to try out Kerridge's food in London.
Here's what we tried:
Obviously, there's a scotch egg on the menu. This one's surely a contender for next year's Scotch Egg Challenge and comes with a mustardy mayo (£6.50)
Likewise, it's not really a British bar menu without there being a sausage roll to try. At Kerridge's it's a venison sausage roll slice with perfect pastry, which comes with a particularly moreish date ketchup (£7).
Clearly, we needed to try the veggie option. Thankfully that turned out to be rotisserie vegetables, battered and deep fried and served with an intense blue cheese dip (£5).
Next up was the pork crunch - you can see a recurring deep-fried theme here, can't you? - and these were served with a lovely rhubarb sauce (£5).
By the time we ordered the Deep Fried Chipirones with Aioli (£7.50) the bar manager was comparing this to an Asterisk and Obelix Gaulish feast. He wasn't wrong.
But we felt we had one more fried snack in us - and the buttermilk chicken popcorn with harissa mayo (£6.50) turned out to be just the thing to fill it.
As for drinks, we enjoyed a carafe of Petale de Rose £30 - and tried two of the cocktails - a Buena Vista and Raspberry Negroni. The wine was very good and the cocktails weren't bad at all but they weren't on quite the same level as the hotel's other bar Bassoon (run by Michael Sager and Marcis Dzelzainis) where we recently tried a superb Meadowsweet Martini (£12)
The Buena Vista (left) and Raspberry Negroni - £12 and £11.50 respectively.
You don't need to reserve for the bar, so it's definitely worth popping in to check out the bar snacks, particularly if you're still trying to score a table at the main restaurant.
Hot Dinners were guests of Kerridge's Bar & Grill
More about Kerridge's Bar & Grill
Where is it? Corinthia Hotel London, Whitehall Pl, Westminster, London SW1A 2BD
How to book: Call 0207 321 3244 or email hello@kerridgesbarandgrill.co.uk
Find out more: Visit their website or follow them on Twitter @CorinthiaLondon
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