Restaurant review: The Northall at the Corinthian

It was my best friend Caz's birthday a couple of weeks ago. I was keen to take her out for dinner to celebrate. I ended up choosing the Northall restaurant at the Corinthian Hotel near Trafalgar square as I'd eaten there before and really enjoyed the experience. 

The Northall - source

The Northall is pretty expensive so I was really pleased to find a pre-theatre Toptable offer of three courses for £30 plus a glass of champagne - pretty good value I thought. The menu itself is good too. Some set menus can be really restrictive in terms of options and some are clearly just offering the cheapest food too. The Northall's menu included steak without an additional charge which I was impressed with. 

The surroundings are very plush - it feels like you're in a very exclusive place; perfect for treating the birthday girl. The service itself was amazing in terms o f our waiter, Omar, who was the sweetest waiter imaginable. The only problem was that we had over an hour wait between our starters and main course. This was fine as we had loads to talk about, and weren't actually going to the theatre, but it would have been hugely annoying if we had been off to watch something.

I started with butternut squash soup and goats cheese which they poured out of a jug for me at the table. I particularly liked the addition of the goat's cheese as it added a welcome tang. Caz chose a duck terrine which she enjoyed. Sorry about the state of the photos - phone plus low lighting makes for terrible pictures.

A special note on the bread which was delicious. We would have accepted more when they offered us a second helping had we known how long we'd have to wait for our mains! Caz had a rich red wine risotto. Unfortunately, Caz is an expert risotto maker and found the Northall's sadly lacking - it was bit too stodgy for her liking. My rump steak was delicious and perfectly cooked to my liking, although bizarrely they didn't bother to ask how I liked it cooking.

I chose badly for dessert; the promising sounding raspberry mille feuille wasn't great. It was served with a citrus sorbet which together with the raspberry was far too sharp for my taste. Plus there really weren't anywhere near to a thousand leaves of pastry more like three. Caz chose a saffron and white chocolate cream dessert with pear caviar which was deliciously decadent. I couldn't taste or see any hint of the saffron though. We finished our meal with complimentary chocolates (made with water, not milk - apparently this gives a purer flavour. I didn't like them) and coffee owing to our long delay in food.

I would definitely recommend the Northall for a special occasion, but only if you're using a special offer. It's probably not worth the money if you were to pay full price for everything. 

Where do you like to celebrate special occasions?