London's Dining Couple Patara Restaurant Review

I hope everyone over here in the UK has been enjoying the sunny weather last week, I know I was but not so much for Amen, he doesn’t like the sun, actually took an umbrella with him for shade when we went to the park lol. Last week we dined at another new restaurant for us called Patara located on Berners street, which is just off Oxford Street. I can’t exactly remember how I found out about the restaurant because I booked it a month ago, but I most likely found it when I was searching for different restaurants for us to try out.

The restaurant being off Oxford Street was easy for us to get to. You can either choose to get off at Tottenham Court Road or Oxford Circus – the walk is about the same 4-5 minutes. . We arrived at the restaurant and were greeted by the hostess who checked us in and led us to our table. As we walked through the restaurant we noticed a few couples at the front of the restaurant, but we were seated further into the dining area. This was 6pm on a Friday and we were the only couple there (I loved that! Lol). It did get busier from around 7pm. The restaurant had low lighting and looked pretty – ideal setting for a date.

Our waiter was really helpful and friendly. All the waiters and waitresses were to be honest. He explained the menu, which was pretty straightforward and suggested the signature menus. We usually never look at the signature/set menus because there’s not much for me to eat that I like. But I had a little look, and to my surprise there was a few dishes that I would’ve had. Maybe next time. This time we just chose from the a la carte menu, which has a lot of good stuff on there.

For drinks I had my usual Virgin mojito and Amen had the ‘Passionata’ non-alcoholic cocktail, they both were really good, although Amen is adamant he knows the “secret” behind the taste of the Passionata … riggggght! Lol.

Review of the food

As were waiting for our food to come, our waiter brought a sample of mini crispy fried vegetable filled dumplings (not sure what they were called) – these were superb, I love vegetable dumplings anyways but Amen also loved it and he wouldn’t usually try vegetable dishes unless I have ordered it! But these, I would order them twice if they were on the menu and happily pay for it. That was a nice touch for them to do.

starters

For my starters I had the chicken satay, they were tasty and the peanut sauce was not too over powering (this dish is actually the chicken and prawn satay – but they were kind enough to alter this for me and only give me chicken). Also, from the vegetarian section I had the Kaffir corn fritters and vegetable spring rolls. The spring rolls were standard but I always order them. They are my favourite starters anywhere – unless they fail epically. The kaffir corn fritters is something I’ve never had before but they were really good. I would definitely order them again.

Amen had the Lime and chilli scallops which were presented beautifully and tasted really nice. The scallop itself wasn’t that spicy, but the topping was sharp and somewhat spicy. Amen has a high tolerance for spice though. He also had the ‘Kanom Jeeb’ – Prawn-pork dumplings. These were simply delicious, one of the best dumplings he’s had. It was presented very beautifully too. We were really impressed with our starters. They came in a good size portions and were really filling – for me anyways, Amen can eat forever lol.

Mains

For my main I had the chicken papaya salad. The chicken was okay but the papaya salad was really tasty. I didn’t eat much of it because of the starters being really filling. But next time I think I would go for a different chicken dish.

Amen had two dishes that he loved. He couldn’t stop talking about it for ages. He had the curried sea bass and the prawns in roasted chilli. The curried sea bass surprised him, as he never has a curry – unless he’s eating mine. He particularly enjoyed it because it isn’t the traditional curry, but just with right amount of curry on top of soft boneless fish.