Underneath The Arches – Nar Restaurant, Vauxhall, 20th of August, 2009

Mike and I met up for a catch-up and a meal on a slightly eerie windy and grey evening, and decided to try Nar Restaurant underneath the Vauxhall railway arches. There’s something about eating, drinking or socialising underneath the arches that makes me think of smoke-hazed air, great jukeboxes, a bustling atmosphere and intimate conversation. What we encountered here was a little different. Dolls’ house wallpaper and chandeliers and rows of tables certainly didn’t translate to the speakeasy theme you long for in a rustic London surrounding.

The first reason said atmosphere doesn’t work is the restaurant just looks odd to begin with. A restaurant that looks like a small aircraft hangar with tables and candles does not inspire an image of fine dining. The second reason it doesn’t work is that when you’re eating a meal in a restaurant that looks like it’s trying to be elegant, you don’t really want to hear trains trundling past with alarming volume above your head.

Of course, this might not have mattered if the food had been good. It wasn’t amazing though, and at times it was just plain bad. Whitebait with tartare sauce is hard to get wrong, and so it proved to be a good’un here. The restaurant was Mediterranean-themed, which sounds promising, but when anywhere is focusing on the Greek/Turkish side of Mediterranean, you may need to approach with caution. (Guess where Nar draws its inspiration from.) As such, I hoped the grilled Cypriot halloumi I ordered to start would be better than relentless, dry and underpresented. Annoyingly it wasn’t, and I couldn’t finish it.

The lamb shank I ordered for a main course was decent enough, if not particularly interesting. I wish they hadn’t pelted the sauce with celery, but it was very easy to eat and not stringy at all. Unfortunately, burnt moussaka is never acceptable whatever the standard of restaurant. The most frustrating part of the evening was the near half-hour wait we endured to be given dessert menus. I tried to find some at the reception desk, but they didn’t seem to have any. We only got them when we requested them. By this point, the passable cheesecake and annoyingly not warmed chocolate fudge cake weren’t enough to raise our spirits.

Under-staffed might be a fair criticism, but you can sometimes get past this if you enjoy the food enough at a restaurant. However, when one of the starters is too dry, one of the mains is burnt and the desserts take half the evening to arrive, you’re suddenly longing for a plate of egg and chips underneath the railway arches, sans any twee decorations and pretences of fine food.

Nar Restaurant