This should have been an exciting evening accompanied by decent grub and groovy music only it ended up kind of being a bit blah although Su Yin, Laney and I did try to make the most of it.
Supperclub is located in a very non-central out of the way position in Notting Hill. Its best described as being located at the end of what would be the Portobello Road markets and to the right a bit. Its not near any other restaurant, shop, pub but actually in what appears to have been an abandoned warehouse.
After taking our names at the front desk and being given red dot stickers to wear on our lapels we were taken by this gentleman (dressed in a white lab coat, bright yellow sneakers, yellow cap and matching yellow-died beard) into this giant white wall painted room. The walls were lined with beds. That’s right – beds. So ladies in those extremely short skirts and shoes which are a killer to get in and out of think hard about your apparel before you come to supperclub – I mean you’l have to take them off, then put them on (to mingle or go to the toilet), take them off, put them on etc … I think it would have been much more fitting if we’d been asked to wear some sort of slinky pjs and slippers …
The first impression you get walking into the venue is that you’re walking into an asylum: white walls, white sheets on the beds, a video projection on to the wall with the mental asylum videos, the waiters and waitresses in their white lab coats (upon which you could draw on at your leisure if you wanted!) and the random writing on the wall. Having said that, however, the lights in the room kept changing so actually what we saw was green, then red, then pink etc There is a giant gaping space in the middle – later we were to see it was used for entertainment but I also imagine when this club turns into a proper club it would be used for dancing and the like – but in the time we were there it was just a vast space.
Food is a “surprise” menu. Sometimes I think “surprise” is just a restaurant’s cheat way of making most of whatever ingredients they have on hand rather than planning a proper menu! Supperclub’s description of their food is thus:
Our amuses were a gazpacho, and a leek and gorgonzola tart. The gazpacho was weird but the tart was divine – though in fairness you can hardly say anything bad about such a combination – the full fat content after all should assure a well-flavoured dish – but it was hardly innovative. This was followed, nearly 20 minutes later, by our pre-starter of a vegetable medley soup (containing coriander, mushroom and a thai flavour). This wasn’t too bad but I found it strange that we would kind of have two liquid items in a row.
The next course, I guess what is the official starter, was to be another half an hour: smoked duck and sea bream terrine (odd!) and tomato bread. Not a favourite with me this one. Unfortunately it was to be further half hour before I got the next taste in my mouth our main of seared beef with some sort of Oriental influenced sauce, soba noodles and potato croquette. The cold soba noodles weren’t really to my liking but I have to admit the beef was well cooked, tender and nicely flavoured. Su Yin, not being a beef eater, got a vegetable terrine type thing – if I were her I wouldn’t have been happy!
And finally for dessert was a sorbet, chocolate and congac crumble with cream. This was apparently compiled in that big empty space in the middle I spoke of earlier but I was in the toilet at the time so didn’t really see what went on. I think it was just basically dishing it out into our little containers etc. so don’t think I missed much
Diet and allergy requirements aside everyone is pretty much having the same thing so it shouldn’t have been difficult to produce or manage the timing of the food. Instead at times some dishes were cold (when it should have been hot) or once not all of us got our food at the same time (Wagamama may be able to use the excuse the food is cooked fresh and delivered as completed – but I could hardly say that supperclub could use the same since we were all eating the same thing!) or seemed to take forever to come!
Food-wise I was expecting more though that’s not to say it wasn’t alright – it just wasn’t as mind-blowing as I was expecting I guess from the combo of the food we got and to the timing of delivery.
The other thing in the mix, and was a valid excuse for why food took a long time to come out between two of the courses was the entertainment. On the hour (so for us it happened at 9 and then 10) they had entertainment in the form of a burlesque dancer (actually – I’ve seen her before at Boom Boom Club) and a kind of burlesque fire throwing/swallowing by this dude dressed in drag. He was kind of awesome. Both acts probably lasted less than 5 minutes and was a good way to break up the time though it would have been nicer for more often and longer performances.
Staff at supperclub are for the most part friendly and actually at times entertaining though hard to get their attention sometimes because the place is so huge! The dude (in yellow everything) who brought us in was a particularly funny guy and boy could he salsa. He later gave us his resume but it read quite funny – all sorts of strange things that can’t be mentioned in this PG entry!
Overall I’m not a hundred percent convinced that supperclub were really at their 100% tonight – food was ordinary with glimmers of loveliness, entertainment was good but way to little of it, staff were friendly but hard to get a hold of at times, and the atmosphere, admittedly on a school night, was a bit dead even as we left at nearly 11.30 … value for money-wise we paid about £33 which I guess wasn’t too bad but was at a discounted offer ….
