St. Martins Lane Hotel, 45 St Martins Lane
London, WC2N 4HX
Nearest Transport: Leicester Square
020 7300 5588
Asia De Cuba is located within St Martin's Lane Hotel and serves innovative Cuban and Asian food in spacious surroundings. Pillars surrounded with memorabilia are dotted around the room. It gets very busy due to its popularity so booking is advisable. Catering for private parties of up to 150 guests is available upon request.
The venue is great and inventive, not least because its a Philippe Starck Hotel. The bar has these quirky little tables, that seem to have no other purpose other than to warm up you drink, but in a fun way! The atmosphere is sophisticated and trendy. The food is good, but not great and at £15-25'ish per starter or £20-40'ish per main course is pretty pricey. However the meals are for sharing so you don't order a starter and main each unless you want to pop! Best dish was the Miso Cured Black Cod (I hope its from sustainable stocks, if you go please ask, I didn't). I also have issues with restaurants that have house wines in the £35 per bottle range no matter where it is. Especially if its a wine that you can normally get for £8.50 in your local off-licence. This was one of those restaurants. The service was however excellent and attentive. Personally I would prefer Nobu!
Nice atmosphere, shame about the food and the bill
Current
Asia de Cuba is a striking place to have dinner at. It has a very interesting theme that manages to be outrageous and tasteful at the same time.
The atmosphere was great, very modern, young and trendy. The food was ok and service was attentive. The bill, however, was completely out of proportion.
The food is fusion and generally very inventive but the quality is average. It's tasty and nice, but, in all fairness, not outstanding. The squid and artichoke salad was delicious and inventive, but it tasted like the chef shopped at Sainsbury's rather than spent time selecting top ingredients. The brownie was of "pizzeria-round-the-corner" quality.
Service was very helpful and friendly. The waiters were very good at advising us on the wine and the courses. They were a bit overly friendly for my taste and were obviously required act as our long lost best friend rather than waiters. I also did not like the fact that they felt touching me and patting me on the back as often as possible would reinforce this impression. Apart from that (and that is a matter of taste), they were extremely good and efficient.
The bill was also a disappointment, coming at about £70 per person (taking into account that we only had a glass of wine each, and shared desert).
In sum, a fun place to go to, but not so good food and really over-priced.
They have a vegetarian menu if you ask for it and the food was delicious. The cocktails were equally delicious and I would definitely recommend this restaurant.
Asia de Cuba restaurant is located on the ground floor of the hotel on Saint Martin's lane. It's quite easy to miss because there's not really a sign outside, only the number of the place so I ended up walking past it a few times before I realized!
This fusion style restaurant is mainly white with wooden floorboards with light bulbs coming down from the ceiling and decorated with soft inviting lights. Little details such as pillars filled with black and white photographs and shelves of bookcases sort of make it feel like you're eating at home albeit a very nice home!
You cannot in any way fault the service. All the staff were extremely helpful and friendly and appeared at the exact moment that you wanted something like magic but weren't in any way imposing at the same time. I don't know how they do it really lol.
When I went, we had the bento box thing for our mains which were definitely interesting. There was a good mix of textures soft and creamy avocado ricecrunchy calamari salad..crispy braised oxtail spring rolls. Yum! The boxes were a good way of trying out a few different things from the menu for cheaper. I'm not sure if they still do it though, it may have been a special for that month.
The dessert I had was just amazing. I got the Cuban coffee brownie with fudge sauce. Firstly, it was just presently extravagantly.they managed to get the piece of brownie standing up vertically! Then the flavours..OH MY GOD! There was an amazing mix of coffee, nuts, chocolate, fudge and kahlua with crunchy bits, cold soft bits, melting bitsit was just heaven! The only problem about this place is that I now have to bag myself a rich boyfriend so I can come here more often! Haha.
I was taken here for a special occasion and nothing disappointed. The kooky atmosphere gives you lots to talk about. The staff were brilliant, very friendly and clear. The food was absolutely delectable (mine better than my boyfriend's though! I had tuna.). We stayed for hours.
Though it was expensive, neither of us felt that we were being cheated. I would certainly go again, but only if the occasion merited somewhere a bit special.
Fantastic surroundings with surreal sculpture in the lobby of the hotel and a very hip bar with great art work.
The restuarant itself is really quirky and would be a great place to go on a first date as there's plenty to talk about just by looking around you.
We received a lovely welcome but unfortunately it took an age to order a drink in the bar and we started to wonder if they were actually treading the grapes for the wine.
Staff in the restaurant were really professional and explained each dish as it was brough to the table. They'd chosen a selection of dishes for our large party (16 of us)which saved the hassle of trying to co-ordinate what everybody wanted, but it was a strange mix. You left feeling like you hadn't really had much to eat and an overwhelming after-taste of grease.
To be fair, I'm not a fan of fusion anyway, but this was extremely over-priced food that was less than average although the service was very attentive.
If you're not in a hurry for a drink I would recommend visiting the bar as it's worth it to see the surroundings alone and there's a great cocktail menu.
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