It may be a bit sad but its not often that I’ll go out on a Saturday night. Yes I’ll go out for dinner and maybe drinks but the night normally stops there. Tonight Pauline and I decided to head out dancing after dinner to make a proper night of it. If this happens at all its normally on a school night or Friday night.

Cruising through some dinner options on Top Table I came across Chino Latino which is a modern pan-asian bar/restaurant located in the Riverbank Park Plaza Hotel on Albert Embankment near Vauxhall. I was worried that being a Saturday there wouldn’t be too many people in the restaurant but surprisingly there were a few people about. Probably thanks due to the London Marathon which is being run later today.

The menu at Chino Latino includes sushi, dim sum, tempura and main dishes. I was hoping for something a bit spectacular like we got at Sushi Samba in New York but on that aspect I was a bit disappointed. The menu selections were okay though nothing I’ve seen before. The Latin/Asian combo I was after just wasn’t there – or if it was it wasn’t really spelt out. However, that was the only disappointment of the night. This may seem a bit harsh because in fairness there are some very good dishes on the menu.

At Chino Latino they emphasis the sharing aspect of the meal and though I’m sure we could have gone ahead and ordered individually I suspect, based on some reviews I’ve read, they really don’t like that so Pauline and I chose dishes to share. We weren’t particularly adventurous in our menu selections and didn’t opt for any of the sushi dishes, where I suspect most of the latin influence when into, and I refused to pay 3x the price for dim sum dishes so we went with shredded duck salad with cucumber, chilli, spring onion and hoi sin sauce (basically, crispy duck pancake) and tempura prawn with creamy chilli sauce for our starters. Both were well presented and its obvious great care was taken in preparing the dishes. I particularly liked the Tempura Prawn which was topped with dustings of wasabi which, in combination with the creamy chilli sauce, was very yummy. I could have snacked on that all night!

For our mains we went with a sirloin steak on hot rocks and miniature chicken. I wish I could remember the exact descriptions of our main meals but I can’t! Both were pretty good though Pauline preferred the chicken. For me both dishes were equally tasty. The hot rocks were indeed hot when they arrived though strangely they didn’t really “cook” the beef much further. From what the waiter said I was expecting it to go from medium to well as it sat there but it didn’t. This didn’t matter so much to me as I normally go for medium in steaks anyway though maybe it put Pauline off a bit as she prefers hers more well done.

After the first two courses and along with my cocktail (cocktails were fairly reasonably at £7.50 though champagne once were a few quid more) I was feeling fairly full. The fact my top was quite tight around my ribs also didn’t help. Heh heh. However, Pauline was in the mood for dessert and I’m not one to turn the third course down specially as they had a pistachio crème brulee on there. I’m always a sucker for a flavoured crème brulee. Pauline went for the dark chocolate fondant which she says was very yummy.

All dishes were very good quality which was pleasing considering the price tags attached to the dishes (e.g. mains ranged from £15 – £35.)

Service at Chino Latino was kind of strange. Fairly attentive without being overbearing (I was gratified that they left us alone at the end of the meal and didn’t try to pester us to keep buying drinks or pressure us into leaving) however I didn’t like the way that the waitresses delivered our dishes. On ever occasion they either plonked the dish on the edges of our table without even attempting to move things around to put them in the centre or waited for us to move things around for them. Price-wise I was glad for the 30% off offer from toptable because it would have otherwise made the food quite expensive – with one cocktail each, three courses and service the bill came to just about £40.

After dinner Pauline and I were trying to work out where we could go dancing. I’m the first one to admit I’m not really one for clubbing and I could probably count the number of times I’ve been out dancing in the last nearly 5 years on four hands. Still, I was quite keen for a groove and we ended up at Motion at Embankment. As it was just gone 11 I think when we got there we had to pay a £10 cover charge, which is something unavoidable at that time of night unless you’ve got on to some guest list. Motion is spread over two and a half floors (the half floor is the toilet level and it has a glass wall that looks out on the basement dance floor with a few couches) with the top floor seemingly for the more casual dancers and those looking more for a bar. The basement floor was where the action was at. The music was a bit boring when we got there (typical house stuff) but it did start to get more interesting as we were leaving. Just a shame there weren’t any guys who really caught my interest! Pauline commented that she felt she was too old to be doing this sort of thing and I would have agreed with her if the music had continued on in the same vein (that is, the house stuff.) Next time we must make sure to choose a better venue.

At least I managed to get the last circle line home though it was a close thing as to which would win first – the circle line getting me home or me getting sick from drinking too much. I know I’m allergic to alcohol and I only had one cocktail and two Smirnoff Ice’s tonight but its no fun to not be drinking! As it was the second Smirnoff was enough to tip me over the edge and I had a very difficult time walking home. I’m just thankful I only had to deal with one guy, who was quite nice and rather a gentleman actually, propositioning me on the walk home. I could barely carry on a conversation with him as it was!