Food

Dinner at Little Bay in Clerkenwell last night, and a starter to chill the bones and linger in the memory. Crab something or other, flavoured with garlic and chilli which under pain of death you’d not have tasted, served with hollandaise. We shared it. What came looked like dessert – 2 profiteroles drowning in custard. Horrific. Forking these globules of crab things allowed the brown sludge within to ooze into the insipid hollandaise, turning everything the colour of brick-dust. No white meat to be found either. The absence of its use anywhere else on the menu makes me certain an actual live crab has never seen the kitchen there, and that they use tinned, watery brown-meat only. It was truly awful – the hollandaise nothing more than a melted pack of Lurpak, cloying and long past its never achieved best. In the immortal words of A A Gill – as a first-course, it was a non-starter. Then 2 passable burgers, with chips fried in goose fat. Good idea having cheap restaurants such as Little Bay, but if there’s no value for money, you’re still being ripped-off.