Grace Dent reviews Roba: A night to forget

Grace Dent is dumbfounded after a night to forget at Roba. If only she could…
Zero for ambience: Roba is the name for the bar/breakfast area of the Norfolk Towers Hotel
Grace Dent12 December 2017

Ambience: 0/5
Food: 0/5

It may have struck you that it’s almost summer. Not quite, but in a blink it will be. Then, before your spray tan even dries and you’re perched on a Hyde Park deckchair, bang, autumn again. In London, time charges past mercilessly. It is precious. The mark of a true Londoner is how furious one becomes when time is squandered on unnecessary meetings, fatuous events and, worst of all, restaurants that should never have opened but insolently did. The latter makes me so furious, I have pioneered a ‘terrible restaurant mindfulness technique’. It stops me from seeking out whoever penned the joint’s lavish publicity blurb, then destroying their desk with a Gianvito Rossi four-inch pump.

Brand-new modern British restaurant Roba appeared last month, about five minutes from Paddington Station, in the dark crevice of London close to the Sussex Gardens budget hotel strip. It’s a postcode crying out for titivation and reasons to smile, so thank heavens for Roba, which the sleek, elegant website positions as something of a cross between Seymour Place’s Lurra and a pocket-friendly take on Gordon Ramsay’s Maze.

The site features several photographs of robata-grilled lamb and giant shrimp atop the requisite fine-dining smears, plus fancy petal-scattered puddings. The menu offers British classics — fish and chips, a chicken curry and other things to suit a palate in search of comfort food, but hey, they must be good because the chef, Andrea Secchi, reports to have worked with Marcus Wareing at The Berkeley. There’s a photo of him on the website, beaming excitedly.

Zero for food: I felt certain I was being filmed for a hidden camera prank show

So off I trot. An evening of precious London time is devoted to Roba, which is a shame because the restaurant is essentially a mirage. It lives only in the mind, vanishing the moment you amble haplessly towards it. Roba is in fact the name for the bar/breakfast area of the Norfolk Towers Hotel. There’s no doubt of this as the breakfast buffet table is still helpfully set up against the wall beside guests with suitcases who are drinking pints of cider. It’s not a nice breakfast room. Not even as nice as a budget Ibis. If a frugal travel agent put me up here I’d breakfast at Pret, as the cheap Formica tables are greatly depressing.

‘This is Roba?’ I said. ‘Um, yes,’ said the solitary waitress. She looked both unsure and surprised to see us. I have never reviewed a largely fictitious restaurant before. I’ll admit, I was dumbfounded. The waitress returned with menus. I ordered two gin-and-tonics, which appeared in the old-style 1980s Rotherham way: spirit in a glass, the mixer left beside it in a bottle. Reducing our expectations, I ordered some things from the classic menu that I’d hope the kitchen could make for me as adequately as room service if I were a hungry tourist. A beetroot and goat’s cheese salad came first, transpiring to be beetroot out of a jar chopped into a bowl with walnuts and cheap cheese, with a dressing of oil and salt.

Grace Dent's worst restaurants of 2015

1/10

At this point I felt certain I was being filmed for a hidden camera prank show. We ordered fish and chips, which arrived on a plank with a saucer of congealed pea mush. The fryer hadn’t been hot enough, thus the batter was raw. The curry had been warmed by someone unacquainted with a microwave, so was dry and powdery. The panna cotta arrived in a glass with a thin yellow film on top and some of the petals from the website pictures. These flowers were the only hint of the Roba we were promised. I did not eat a mouthful of the pudding, as I was filming the next day and on-location bathroom arrangements are rarely reliable. I spent the next 48 hours talking about the owners of Roba like Liam Neeson talks about his daughter’s kidnappers in Taken. I have a very particular set of skills, Roba. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you.

Roba Bar & Restaurant

4 Gin and tonic £18.80

1 Beetroot salad £8.75

1 Fish and chips £13.75

1 Chicken curry £13.75

1 Panna cotta £6

Total £61.05

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