Black Roe

Pacific Rim cuisine, Black Roe Poke Bar & Grill located in Mayfair London, offering seafood, poke, and grills.

Black Roe | Poke Bar & Grill | Mayfair | London

http://www.blackroe.com

Restaurant Review: Black Roe Poke Bar & Grill

The latest venture from restaurateur Kurt Zdesar brings the exotic flavours of Hawaii to the streets of London Just when you think you’ve tried it all, that London’s restaurant scene couldn’t possibly conjure anything else from its proverbial hat, it proves once again that it has more up its sleeve.

This month, we celebrate the opening of Black Roe Poke Bar & Grill in Mayfair – a restaurant serving Pacific Rim cuisine and featuring the city’s first bar dedicated to Hawaiian delicacy poke.

Pronounced ‘po-kay’, the dish comprises marinated raw fish sitting atop a bed of short-grain rice; it is traditionally made with ahi tuna, but Black Roe offers multiple interpretations of the classic, including scallop, sea bass and beef tataki.

The brainchild of Kurt Zdesar – the restaurateur behind Soho’s Chotto Matte – the restaurant’s pièce de résistance is the poke bar that sits at the front of the space, manned by an expert chef.

These little balls of indulgence will have me returning to Black Roe, alongside the restaurant’s buzzy, convivial atmosphere.

Black Roe London Mayfair bar review & menu | Tatler Magazine

Restaurant check: Black Roe - Business Traveller – The leading ...

Black Roe was opened in March by Kurt Zdesar, the man who helped launch the Nobu group and is the founder of Ping Pong.

He also operates Japanese-Peruvian restaurant Chotto Matte in Soho and is planning to extend his Hawaiian-influenced Pacific Rim offering with three new sites (Liverpool Street, Soho and South Kensington) in addition to Black Roe in Mayfair.

These forthcoming openings are rumoured to be less formal, with street food-style menus.

Zdesar previously opened seafood restaurant Bouillabaisse on the Black Roe site at 4 Mill Street last June, but it didn’t do well and ended up closing down in early 2016.

Black Roe is a bit off-the-beaten track, in a quiet Mayfair side street near Savile Row.

Black Roe: London's first poké bar to open this month | London ...

ES Food Newsletter Hawaiian fish salads known as poké are already big business in LA and New York, and now they’re taking off in London — with the capital’s first dedicated pokē bar and restaurant set to launch later this month.

They follow in the footsteps of raw fish dishes such as sashimi and ceviche, which are more popular than ever.

The new restaurant, named Black Roe, will be launched by Kurt Zdesar who is also behind Soho’s Chotto Matte, where Peruvian and Japanese cuisines are merged.

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Along with poké itself, Black Roe will serve meat cooked on a kiawe wood grill — a traditional kind of Hawaiian wood grill which uses carob wood.

Restaurant Review – Black Roe Poke Bar and Grill | The London ...

Instead of serving slivers of pan-fried Pikachu or mock Squirtle soup, places like Mayfair’s Black Roe Poke Bar and Grill specialise in the Hawaiian dish traditionally consisting of raw fish – generally ahi tuna – served on a bed of short-grained rice.

Starting with two Poke dishes, one featuring sweet snow crab, the other being the restaurant’s signature ‘Black Roe ahi and yellowtail’ (£8.95).

However, both dishes did boast a mound of unnecessary caviar: an ostentatious ingredient that brought nothing to the dish, other than an inflated price tag, unwanted feelings of guilt and maybe some Instagram credentials.

Conversely, the use of lavish lobster again felt unnecessary – bringing very little to the dish in terms of flavour, especially when paired with the crowning slathering of molten cheese.

Visit for a quick lunch of poke dishes (plus the beef tataki, perhaps) and you’ll likely leave feeling satisfied.

Black Roe | Restaurants in Mayfair, London

Hawaiian-inspired restaurant equals hula girls in grass skirts and coconut bras.

But at Black Roe, the vibe is swanky Asian fusion (don’t forget, a large proportion of Hawaii’s population are of Japanese descent) – all sexy dark woods, flattering lighting and chilled tunes.

But while that joint balances slick style with culinary substance, Black Roe’s kitchen has some work to do.

Pokē can be served with or without rice; here, it’s the ‘served-over-rice’, eye-on-the-profit margin version.

Factor in the 20-minute wait for the bill and absence of service (we weren’t offered fresh drinks once) and it’s a black mark for Black Roe, sadly.