In our search to find the idea date location we thought we’d check out one of Central London’s querkist restaurants.
Sarastro in Drury Lane sits in the heart of London’s theatre Land and has embraced its location fully.
It’s a Turkish restaurant and captures this theme with a setting taken straight from Arabian Nights. Velvet table clothes and gilt furniture gives a very theatrical atmosphere but more so the opera house style balconies where we dinned, semi privately were an enjoyable touch. These can be booked for small or large parties, allowing you to have privacy while still enjoying the atmosphere of the large restaurant.
They offer various dining options from set meals to a la cart, however the choices are all quite similar with traditional meze starters and largley meat with rice style mains. We chose the set menu which was £28 per head and included two courses. The first included a selection of mezzes, hummus, aubergine, yoghurt dip, cous cous and others, all nice and tasty, served with fresh, turkish bread. With a glass of wine this in its self is quite a meal.
Our mains were slightly less impressive. I thought I had ordered chicken liver but turned out to be a miss-communication between the waitress and myself and I ended up with a rather bland chicken breast stew with a side of rice. Thankfully I was quite full from the starters or I probably would asked her to change it. My date had the lamb shank which was very tender but again quite bland, neither of our mains lived upto the sumptuous interiors or the starters but we were enjoying our little balcony box so neither of us minded too much.
There was no way we could have fitted in dessert, we felt like we could nestle our heads in our velvet napkins and taken a nap at this point but the theatre called.
All in all it’s a fun evening and a setting you would never had experienced before. I would advise to book ahead especially at the weekend if you want a balcony booth. On Monday, Thursday and Sunday they have live performances during the evening, everything from a string quartet to Motown. Visit their website full full details: www.sarastro-restaurant.com