Kitchen

Always on the lookout for something new to do, Kristy booked us in for a session at The Kitchen in Parsons Green. Conveniently, it’s only 25 minutes walk from our house!

The concept is fairly simple: pick some meals off their menu, then turn up and make them all the while with a Michelin star chef at your beck and call. You even get to wear an official “The Kitchen” apron while you smile for the camera.

Once you’re done, the meals are heat wrapped for you to cook up at your leisure when you get home. Since we were Kitchen virgins, we conservatively picked only four mains (i.e. two each), and one dessert.

The execution is seamless – it does exactly what it says on the tin. We turned up, ingredients were thrust upon us, and we made our meals according to the sheet of directions. When something wasn’t clear – for example, rolling a slice of salmon inside a fillet of fish and then wrapping it in cling film to make a sausage – you just give the chef a ‘hoy and he comes and bails you out of trouble.

Our only complaint was that, generally, it was a little too easy. One of Kristy’s meals was a Shepherd’s Pie, but all she had to do was place the pre-cooked mince into a tray, and top it with the pre-cooked mash potato. We discussed this with the staff, and they told us they were thinking of adding a difficulty rating to each meal, which sounds like a perfect solution.

Also, they would benefit from having someone unrelated to the business read over the instructions, as they’re sometimes a little unclear, and contradictory. For example, step one will say, “add x and y to a bag” implying you add them to the same bag; then step two will say, “take the bags and ….” – implying you should have used two bags!

So, the big question – how do they taste? The first meal we cooked up was the fish sausages on bubble and squeak burgers. I didn’t fully understand the instructions (“seasoned water??”), and also ended up burning the burgers a bit – but there was no denying that it was quite tasty. We also cooked up the Tarty Tarty for dessert; it looked nothing like the photo, and the caramel all stuck to the bottom of the tray.

So, so far, so-so, and I’ve already used the word “so” five times in this sentence. Tonight we’re having the pork belly; hopefully we can execute with a bit more success!