Review: Bibi, Mayfair

Bibi is very Mayfair. Fully on trend, there is mostly counter seating, but here the stools are plumply upholstered affairs with comfortable backs. Lighting is dark and clubby. A carafe of water is offered, then appears as £3.5 per person on the bill. And the included service charge is 15% of course. We did enjoy perfectly good service throughout, albeit the volume of music they’ve decided on made it very hard to hear most of the dish descriptions. It’s a tasting menu…

Snacks to begin include a cup of very warming mushroom broth, livened with hot spices. Also some cheesy puffed crackers to dip in a three-layered relish of curd, mango and coriander; nice enough but mainly sweet. Then a good quartet of snacks. The beetroot tart topped with caviar was probably the best, shot through with smoke and anise flavours. Tiny raw prawns were a little lost on their spicy diced cucumber base. Lovely bite-sized dokhla topped with cured trout, although again the balance was a bit off; too much of the tasty little cake for the salmon. A decent and very saline poached oyster needed something more than a mild pear granita to pair with it.

The bread course was stronger, a very indulgent little brioche with some fantastic fermented green chilli butter. Yum. Nice chicken liver parfait too, although there was too little bread for the amount of butter and parfait. I had to watch them take the remains of that lovely butter away! Hmm… raises an interesting question, though. Now that bread has become “a course” in most tasting menus, rather than just something offered at the start of the meal with little fanfare, is it still okay to just ask for more?

Anyway, next was a nice plump piece of monkfish, very lightly cooked and served with a buttery curd sauce that had some of the same fermented chilli flavour. Great piece of fish, although I think it could have stood up to some more serious flavours. This was followed by a beautiful chunk of lamb off the barbecue grill, charred edges but pink and full-flavoured within. My favourite dish came next: a “galouti” kebab of goat, which seems to be a very soft (i.e. spreadable) ball of meat off the grill, sandwiched into a beautifully soft and paper-thin charred roomali roti. Potent spices in the kebab but the flavour of the meat came through well.

The main course was, of course, a complete little curry: rice, daal and a well-seared chicken breast with a splendid buttery curd gravy. The rice was a superb pulao with bits of morel through it, the daal was richly buttery but a bit lacking in depth of flavour. Pre-dessert came in the form of a lovely roast pineapple sorbet with tarragon leaf. Note this: pineapple and tarragon are a BRILLIANT pairing. The main dessert was a lovely creamy concoction in a crisp white chocolate shell, with some delicate saffron flavours a bit beaten by the nice passionfruit curd. The very very fine sev surrounding the crisp egg was a deft touch.

Overall a very good menu, albeit we managed to pick some holes. They’ve some good house cocktails and a decent selection of wines by the glass. We also finished off with a very fine creamy chai served in homely earthenware teapots. The menu is £125 each and on balance I think that’s what I’d expect from Mayfair but, taken more broadly, probably a little steep for the meal we had. All that said, it was a lovely evening and I’d recommend a visit to Bibi.