Tag: Oxford Street

This is another venue that I’ve been to before, but The Fork gave me £20 promotional credit to spend and this is an ideal place to spend that as there aren’t that many options.

I was less than excited to discover that there was a live band on (no disrespect to them, I’m sure they were marvellous, it’s just not entirely my thing) and I noticed that the three sets of customers in front of me all asked to be seated away from it in an area that was closed. The Hard Rock staff are endlessly professional and managed to work that situation out for all of those customers. It’s a reminder perhaps that you can’t really mix a band and people eating nearly next to them, even in a Hard Rock cafe. Fortunately, they stopped banging about shortly after I was seated, there was some technical issue or something. Back to the service, it’s impeccable, but that’s within the brand standard and I wasn’t surprised at the high level of engagement.

The beer option I went for had run out, but the staff member offered some recommendations. I went for the acceptable Camdens Hells lager which is drinkable. I noticed that half pints were nowhere near half the price of a full pint, which does slightly annoy me (it’s a rare situation now) and CAMRA campaign against that. However, it’s fair to note that Hard Rock Cafe aren’t really aiming to be listed in the Good Beer Guide, so that situation is unlikely to change. They really should be doing a better selection of craft beer though, that’s within their brand remit I’d have thought.

The chicken tenders, all nicely done and there seems little more for me to add about this as it’s hardly high end cuisine. However, I needed to get to my hotel, so something simple worked for me. The dining environment is very comfortable and Hard Rock Cafe have plenty of musically related things on the walls to look at. The customer base was quite formal, but they seemed to mostly be hotel customers and the prices to stay here aren’t cheap.

Anyway, the meal cost me £2 which was the automatic tip, so that worked out as far as I was concerned. And The Fork have sent me more promotional credit (which is very kind of them) which means I’ll likely be back within the next few weeks. I’d recommend going here, and book using The Fork does give 50% off eating here most of the time, which makes the prices entirely reasonable.

We won’t go back into my annoyance with The Fork (what I consider to be the TripAdvisor’s badly run restaurant booking service, but others may have different views, including probably TripAdvisor), but they had the Hard Rock Cafe in Oxford Street on a 50% off food offer. They were also promising 1,000 Yums (worth £20) for a booking made under an offer to get people back eating in restaurants, although I shall see in due course whether this gets paid out. That meant I made an exception and made a booking via The Fork, which will likely give me something else to complain about next week.

Anyway, the restaurant wasn’t packed. This is a large and expensive set-up on Oxford Street, right next to Marble Arch underground station, which also consists of a Hard Rock hotel. The whole complex opened in 2019, perhaps not the best timing with what was to happen next. The management are left with a huge restaurant that was designed to make money by having a large turnover, but they’re trying to fill it as best as they can.

I entered and there were no staff immediately visible, so I meandered to near the bar area so that I could stand there and look awkward. Fortunately, someone looking a bit important noticed me and found a member of staff to welcome me, which was all done efficiently. They didn’t seem overly interested that I had a reservation, which is understandable since they have about 100 tables available. I needed them to be interested though for the purposes of The Fork deal, and they seemed all content when I mentioned it.

When I say that it wasn’t packed, there were about two customers. They offered to seat me at the bar, but I was quite content with one of the tables and the staff member didn’t seem overly annoyed at my decision. I can’t be doing all that social at lunchtime, I’m not in America at the moment. Although dreaming of it….. Anyway, I digress.

This is the view I had from my table, which I thought was entirely satisfactory and is nicer than most dining options that I frequent. The service was as would be expected from Hard Rock, which was engaging, personable, enthusiastic and all of those things. It was all very timely, but there were as many staff members as guests, so this probably wasn’t entirely difficult to achieve.

I decided to go for the chicken fajitas, which were about £8.50 after the discount and I considered that to be very reasonable, especially given the decadent and empty surroundings. The food was decent, the chicken was moist and tender with some depth of flavour to it. The sour cream seemed to have been served using an ice cream scoop and I was pleased that the cheese had been kept away from any hot items (I like my cheese cold as I’m awkward). Restaurants never seem to provide enough wrap things (the meal comes with four) for the amount of food and I notice one person in a review said they asked for one more wrap and got charged £4.99. And the amount of guacamole was generous, which pleased me.

I like “the damage” bill holder, although I wonder how that goes down for those who are moderately shocked by the size of their bill. My bill came to £15.28 by the time that the unlimited sodas and service charge was added on. I do try and visit Hard Rock Cafes when in a city, so this wasn’t an unreasonable price given the quality of the experience.

My knowledge of music memorabilia is very limited, but I do like having a little look at what each Hard Rock in the chain has acquired for their walls.

All told, I thought that this was a professionally run restaurant and I can imagine it’ll be very popular with tourists when some form of normality returns to London. Fortunately, the quietness of London at the moment means that I got what I considered a cheap meal and I’ll be very pleased if The Fork actually pay the £20 out like they’re supposed to, as I’ll probably come back here to spend it. If that all works out, this was a rather keenly priced meal.