Review: Saturday Supper Club at Gaucho

In its top floor Private Dining room – looking like a set from an early Bond movie, all white leather, chrome, mirrors and soft-lighting – the Supper Club aims to create a unique dining and entertainment experience.

As well as a gourmet extravaganza, the Supper Club offers a wine tasting experience and entertainment which ranges from contemporary musicians to Film Art and a house DJs playing until the small hours.

On our visit, the menu included a private wine tasting and live performances from modern blues and folk singer Lucy Kitt and rock house group Farewell City.

The evening started with a choice of cocktail – a Mojito or Caipirinha. We opted for the former.

Now my expectations of this rum-based highball are exceptionally lofty having become rather well acquainted with them at their birthplace, The Hotel Nacionale in Havana.

I wasn’t disappointed, the lime and mint in tune with the sweetness of the sugar, the potency of the rum.

While enthusing about the skills of the club’s mixologist, the first part of our eclectic evening began.

Gaucho wine director and buyer Phil Crozier sauntered over with three bottles of wine – a Torrentes, a Malbec and a Cabernet Sauvignon – and proceeded to give us an enlightening, informative mini wine tasting.

If we didn’t know about Argentine wine before Phil’s enthusiastic delivery, we certainly did after, especially as Phil very generously filled up our glasses before he left, enabling us to muse about their bouquet and body to our palate’s content.

The Supper Club menu has been carefully selected to include a range of traditional House favourites such as Salmon Tiraditos and Bife De Cuadril, all perfectly suited to Phil’s selected wines.

For starters I opted for the Chorizo Sausage On Roasted Pepper, my dining companion, the Salmon Tiraditos.

Mine was a smoky sensation, the spicy sausage massaged by the sweetness of the red pepper.

Looking like a Latino lovely, all colour and vibrancy, my companion’s tiraditos fused the spice of pepper, chilli, coriander and red onion with the calmness of guacamole, the freshness of salmon.

A triumph both on the eye and in the stomach.

When in an Argentine-inspired restaurant, eat like an Argentine.

So both my companion and I eschewed the Wild Mushroom Gnocchi and Lemon And Lime Marinated Spatchcock Chicken in favour of the Bife De Cuadril.

The English dictionary boasts the most extensive, rich range of descriptive words in modern day language – and that’s still not enough of a choice to describe the piece of rump that was served on its own, sans adornment.

It was like a lump of gold bullion being placed before Ronnie Biggs – tantalising.

Although, we really didn’t have room for desserts after so much rich fare, with the credit crunch large in our thoughts, we couldn’t refuse.

Who knows when we’ll next be able to afford dining out in style? Pancakes with vanilla ice cream and dulche de leche and dulche de leche cheesecake – do you see a pattern here? – were our choice.

Both lived up to the already high-bar set, offering up sweet, sticky, rich and rounded end of dinner treats.

Having eaten exceptionally fine fare, drunk exceedingly good wine and been entertained by an aspiring Joni Mitchell (Lucy Kitt) and a Garbage-lite set (Farewell City), there really was nothing more this super Supper Club could have offered.

But there was more. To finish off the night, our delightful waiter (how do people stay so upbeat after waiting on people for more than five hours?) brought us a Carino, a fruity little shot which slipped down a treat and worked wonders on our dance moves when we hit the groove floor.

Now that’s entertainment

The Supper Club,
Gaucho, The O2,
£55 per person, includes two cocktails, three-course meal, wine to complement each course and live entertainment. Every Saturday from 9pm to 1am
For more details, call
020 8858 7711 or visit
www.gauchorestaurants.com