As I clearly eat out in London quite a bit sometimes I feel the pressure to find somewhere interesting and different to eat when people rely on me to choose a venue. I’m also conscious that I shouldn’t choose anywhere too prohibitively expensive for people. Toptable has definitely been my friend this year in providing me with dining options – tonight’s venue for a catch up with Rita and Ade was Flame at the Empire Casino. I used to work with the two of them at my current work place and strangely we never really went out when we were working together. Time to rectify that!

I’ve written before about the Empire’s other restaurant (FuLuShou) and in Flame you get, I guess, Grill/Modern European options versus the Orienal options at FuLuShou. The restaurants in the Empire are like hidden little gems – not overly busy but with the buzz of the casino around you the restaurants have a nice atmosphere and deliver some high quality food.

The set menu at Flame is quite simple but I believe provide good options for most palettes. Interestingly all three of us ended up choosing exactly the same thing for our three courses tonight – Pumpkin Soup, Grilled Salmon and Sticky Toffee Pudding! Another case of great minds thinking alike.

All three dishes were perfectly cooked and so tasty. Not so heavy as to sit in your stomach and make you too tired for a bit of a tipple on the casino floor of course. 😉 The service at Flame was great as well. The right level of attentiveness, extremely friendly and efficient.

After dinner I also took Rita and Ade down to the casino floor. I wasn’t actually going to even play tonight, and despite how it may appear that wasn’t the reason I chose Flame as a venue tonight, but the blackjack was too tempting. We ended up staying and entertaining ourselves for another couple of hours though poor Ade and Rita did have to watch me work the table for a little bit. They brought me luck though so I was happy with that. 🙂

It was great to catch up with the pair of them tonight. Good to hear that they’re both happy in their new jobs though from what Rita says she could do with a bit more work! Be careful what you ask for I told her! I’m always happy to find new playmates and even though it looks like Rita will be heading back to Oz mid-next year I’m looking forward to doing more things with the both of them over the next few months. Not sure we can convince Ade to go ice-skating with us though …