If you’d have told me that a fusion of Asian and Latin flavours would work well together I would have been dubious, but when Bookatable offered to treat us to a meal in London when we were up for the day the intrigue was too much and we booked at Asia de Cuba, located in the St Martins Lane hotel in Covent Garden. The decor in the restaurant is stunning, huge circular columns covered in books, or picture frames and delightfully huge mirrors leaning against the walls. It was a shame we had the little people with us as it would have been the perfect place to consume cocktails and wine in on a date night, but hey ho!
We had booked the ‘star deal’ which is 3 courses and a Mojito for £30 per person. The menu is a set menu with four options per course but we found we had plenty to choose from. There are side orders available to complement your meals, and we also ordered chicken nuggets, chips and rice for the children. Sadly their culinary tastes don’t extend much beyond that at the moment but at one and two years old that’s fair enough I think! Our Mojitos were delivered, and we made a start on them whilst we browsed the menu. Sam chose the Crispy calamari salad to start, and I went for the Black bean & plantain empanadas. He said he never would have paired banana with Calimari, but it worked! I must admit that I like neither seafood nor bananas so I didn’t even try it! My empanadas were delicious though, the sweet and sour dip was more sour than sweet and was perfect for dipping the crispy parcels in. Sam claimed the calimari salad ‘blew him away’ which is high praise from him indeed!
For our main courses we chose two dishes we could share together, as recommended to us by our water. I had the ‘Mojo duck confit’ served in a dish with brown rice, orange, Thai basil, Thai chili, poached egg Ginger & papaya marinated palomilla. Sounds like a mouthful but it was delightful, all the flavours worked so fantastically and the added touch of the poached egg being broken when the dish was delivered to us, then smothered with the sauce was a lovely one! I admit although we were meant to share I actually loved this too much to share more than a few forkfuls with Sam! He chose the 8oz flat iron steak, which was cooked perfectly, although couldn’t be topped by his starter.
The Guava whipped layered cheesecake that I chose for pudding was absolutely amazing, it looked too good to eat, tiny dollops of cheesecake, with dehydrated tropical fruit (that the baby loved!) and I’ve been dreaming about it since I enjoyed it! Sam (and Athena) had the mexican doughnuts, which I expected to be more like churros but were lighter, and the chilli thai chocolate dip was divine, I’ll admit to being a gannet and polishing it off with a spoon once the doughnuts were gone!
The service was spot on from arrival to the end of our meal. A high chair was brought to us, and then we were told to make the most of the space round the table next to us to pop our shopping bags and buggy, which was great as it meant we didn’t need to keep going back to it in the lobby for wipes etc. Davide our waiter had amazing knowledge of all the dishes, and we did put him through his paces as we weren’t sure what to go for at all! Extra water arrived unprompted, and plates were cleared quickly too.
We thoroughly enjoyed our evening meal at Asia de Cuba, the decor was eclectic and fun and the service and food were second to none! It’s a place we’ve added to our ‘go back without the kids’ list as there were some amazing sounding drinks on the cocktail menu, and a bottomless brunch on offer too! The atmosphere is perfect for an intimate date night, with a few secluded tables too, great for focussing on each other but not so great for food photos so do excuse mine! The star menu that we chose is £30 per person, which is amazing value for a three course meal plus a mojito in central London.
Bookatable treated us to this meal out for the purpose of this review. To my knowledge the restaurant weren’t aware that we were reviewing our experience with them.
OOH this sounds and looks DELISSSSSH.
Sophie x