Opposite Green Park, a smart, well-spaced and welcoming Peruvian bar/restaurant offering good standards all-round; for those not too worried about counting the pennies, its clubby charms would make it particularly suitable as a party destination.
Arjun Waney – co-founder of such establishments as Zuma and Roka – clearly knows a bit about establishing a restaurant as a fashionable success. And clubs too – his relaunch of the nearby Arts Club quickly made it quite a hit with the glitterati.
It comes as no great surprise, then, that his recently converted ground-floor and semi-basement premises, opposite Green Park, have a clubby vibe – ideal for a party. It helps that the space – carved out of an impressive Georgian townhouse – has that touch of genuinely quirky character which is not always evident in the grander establishments in this part of town. On the day we visited, a few months after opening, a rather smart and comfortable ground-floor dining room – which would make a good venue for the jollier sort of business lunching – had just come into service for the first time.
Peruvian cooking, the speciality here, is not quite the London rarity it once was, so there is now a peer group against which culinary standards here may be compared, so we can can say that the ceviches, tiraditos (thinly-sliced fish) and skewers, for example, struck us – on the grounds of appearance as well as taste – as being very serviceable, if not quite on a par with Lima in Fitzrovia, which would be our top Peruvian tip in town.
Taken as an all-round ‘package’, though, this is possibly a superior destination, and if you were looking for that grand party venue, the food would go down very nicely indeed. And the friendly staff and the (relatively) reasonable wine prices do nothing to detract from a formula which offers little to fault overall.
