Bincho, Oxo Tower

This month's meal club snuck up on us somewhat. We got to a few days before and hadn't really thought about where to go. The experience of 50% off at Villandry last month prompted some half-hearted browsing on toptable but nothing really stood out as being in the spirit of adventure. Luckily Linz came up trumps with the suggestion of Bincho - a Japanese BBQ tapas type place. We were:

James
Linz
Mamps
Pete
Vicki

Housed on the second floor of the Oxo Tower, the views of the river and St.Paul's are obviously great but the key attraction (for James at least) was that Bincho sounds a bit like" Benchod". Surprisingly, the restaurant was very empty. It's a pretty large place with seating for probably about 100 people but we were1 of maybe 4 tables in the whole place. The staff spent a lot of time twiddling their thumbs and were very willing to string out a conversation with us about the menu. When the waitress was explaining the menu to us (2 skewers per order, "order 6") we all started off paying attention but slowly realised that it was getting more and more baffling by the second. Gradually and one by one, we abandoned the lesson leaving Vicki to look attentive (although she readily admitted not having a clue what the waitress was talking about either).

To start we had edamame and some friend chicken in breadcrumbs - both of which were mucho tasty although they did come with some bizarro cabbage type thing on the side. Conversation turned to the impending visit to Warwick and how I was very unbothered by it all. I'm glad to say that I was right. It was a shambles of Bistro1 proportions. Additionally a conversation about weddings quickly turned to whether or not it's acceptable to have a "no kids" rule and then this, in turn, degenerated into a rant about whether or not it's acceptable to beat your kids. We're getting very Daily Mail in our old age.

Choosing our main course was something of a trial. James' now familiar "birthday scam" failed to pay dividends again so were stumped for 4 skewers each plus some rice (which was layered with chicken and mushrooms- it was great but a refilled bowl they brought out later was way too salty - even for James who'd been eating the rock salt out of its pot earlier). We eventually shared and swapped a lot of the skewers but between us we had chicken, lamb, eel, tuna, quail egg & bacon, aubergine,sea bream, tiger prawn and others. It's all cooked on this special coal called bincho (some of which I pilfered on the way out for no reason whatsoever) which gives it an excellent smoky flavour. It was all really nice and pretty reasonably priced too (£25-30 including wine) - even Linz who's been hit hard by the credit crunch (big fat blackberry with a crack down the middle of it plus the drinking of tap water!!). We also had a conversation about how Manpreet once ended up nearly being one of Grissom's investigations on CSi.

That's pretty much it. A decent place, worth going to if you haven't been before but probably not one to necessarily put on your favourites list. Next month is an expensive one and then in May we're going to to the postponed sitaary.