Its probably a bit of a cheat to eat haggis for the first time in London rather than Scotland but beggars can’t be choosers. Albannach is a modern Scottish bar restaurant situated just off Trafalgar Square. My first impression was not a particularly good one. We walked up to the desk at the entrance of the bar/restaurant. There were two men there – a guy in a suit and a guy in a kilt. The guy in the kilt was busy so the guy in the suit said hello to us and asked us all the usual questions – do you have a booking, what time, who for etc. When I finished giving him all the details he pauses and then says, okay well, the guy in the kilt will sort out your table. Fine. The guy in the kilt finally was through doing whatever he was doing (not entirely clear what) then he asked us all over again for our details in actually a rather arrogant manner. Hello? We just told the other dude! I kept my comment to myself.

No entirely unexpectedly he sat us in the bar area and said our table would be a few moments. Unexpectedly the
few moments turned into minutes, into fifteen minutes, into nearly half an hour. I was not super-impressed.

Finally we were seated at our table. I could kind of understand the wait. The bar restaurant is taken up mostly by the ground floor bar. The restaurant is situated on the first floor but probably takes up about a third of the bar space. It makes for an attractive looking spot but means not much space for the dining. There are not many tables in the upstairs area and at least we were seated on the balcony with a kind of view over the bar area. Kind of because the view was blocked with white string type curtain which was nice to give the diners in the restaurant some privacy and a bit of a sound barrier (only a small one) to the noise downstairs.

Albannach have an all day menu (so not distinction between lunch and dinner) with dishes ranging from oysters for starters, to salads and sandwiches, to meat dishes (such as steaks and veal chops) and a few Scottish “classics.” I opted for a mushroom ravioli followed by “Macsween haggis, neeps & tatties” and Pat smoked haddock fish cakes followed by a main of steak with fat chips and supposedly béarnaise sauce.

Starting with my dishes the mushroom ravioli ended up being one giant ravioli which was, admittedly, stuffed with quite a bit of filling. Served over asparagus and with a hollandaise sauce it wasn’t too bad a dish. Just a shame that it didn’t look like the best dish in the world. For example, Pat commented that the ravioli shouldn’t have been served burst like it was. Equally not so greatly presented was my main of haggis. I was confronted with a pile of haggis which looked like it had been hastily slopped over some mash within which neeps were deeply buried (I had to google exactly what neeps were because they were not exactly recognizable within the mash.) Again the dish was quite tasty (maybe a tad over salty) but to look at it your appetite would hardly be stimulated.

The prettiest dish was probably Pat’s fish cases which were huge, light and fluffy. The tartare sauce was nicely textured though Pat thought not as strongly tasting as he would have expected it to be. His steak dish was pretty ordinary. The béarnaise sauce was like a little smear at the front of his plate. The fat cut chips were indeed fat but were unseasoned. Neither of our dishes were particularly colourful (mainly browns) so it was good that we ordered some sides of steamed broccoli (seemed to be drenched in oil) and beans in garlic.

We didn’t follow through with any desserts because we were both suitably full plus the dessert menu was rather uninspiring.

The service at Albannach tonight was hit and miss. The waitress was a bit scatty I thought but it was alright and they were happy to let us sit at the table after we were finished for as long as we wanted.

Despite some negatives with the food I have to say that at 50% off from top table the value was extremely good value for money so it’s a decent option in the touristy west end if you have planned ahead. Oh! You must also make sure to visit the toilets. The mirror with the antlers freaked me out a bit but its pretty funky.