The girls and I had got to 'W' in alphabet dining. And 'W' stands for West Indian, of course …
Mango Room is a well-established restaurant tucked away behind Camden tube. The menu is modern Caribbean, which is to say skimpier servings and more artful presentation than such good-honest-tuck joints as nearby Cottons, whose portion sizes and enthusiasm with carbohydrates can cause hospitalisation if not sloshed down with too much rum.
The restaurant is well-presented in muted Western style, with loud canvases shouting its Caribbean credentials. The atmosphere is a similar compromise between exuberance and restraint, the serving staff friendly, but not to the point of humping your leg.
The extensive cocktail list yielded a good Cuba Libre (and here I use 'good' in its original Anglo-Saxon sense of 'strong enough to floor a buffalo') to sip while reading the decent length menu, which listed plenty of seafood options as well as vegetarian and seafood for starters.
My avocado salad was overdressed but perfectly tasty, and companions' scallops and fish were plated with an artistic flair and clearly put together by someone with a sense for bright flavours.
The main courses which followed were small enough to necessitate side dishes, making everything inevitably more expensive than it initially looked, but the careful menu reader can factor this in.
My little pile of ackee and saltfish (ackee: a Caribbean fruit than inexplicably tastes like boiled egg yolk) was excellent, particularly with the sides of rice and peas and fried sweet potato, although the prettifying touches (black olives? with West Indian food?) were unnecessary and weird. The fish platter impressed visually, a carefully plated mix of well-cooked seafood, but the chicken, which came with a choice of sauces, was half-drowned in a bizarrely runny lake of jerk.
Puddings were also a bit above the average, my sinful bananas flambeed with rum and cinnamon simply delicious. All in all, the meal came to about £40/head, inc a cocktail each and bottle of white between four, which seemed a bit high for what we got.
This place would be suitable for a cosy date, or a special meal. It didn't rock by world, but it served above average ingredients assembled with considerable skill and just a little flair.
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