Anyway, onto the review. I’d been to Roka’s Charlotte Street location several years ago and remember being freezing cold the whole time. My experience in Roka Canary Wharf was much better than that. Our waitress Martyna was very very good. Our cocktails took a bit longer than expected and you could tell she was angrier about it than we were. When they did arrive, they were delicious! Rome wasn’t built in a day and my cocktail took 20 minutes. Both were worth the wait. I had the raspberry passion and it tasted like raspberry juice that gets you drunk. Like I said, worth it.
We had the premium tasting menu and the wine pairings to go with it. I couldn’t pronounce 90% of the menu, but it was all delicious. The best dish on the menu was the first thing we had, the yellowtail sashimi because it had a truffle dressing. The premium sashimi selection was good, but I did find the tuna to be a little fishy.
As usual, I really liked the spicy tuna roll, which is my favorite kind of sushi. I hate when restaurants cover perfectly good sushi with cayenne pepper and just call it spicy. Roka’s spicy tuna didn’t do that and was very mild but oddly (in a good way) geometric.
By the time we got to the black cod and scallop skewers, I was pretty full. The scallops were good, but I think Hakkasan has a better black cod.
Overall, the meal was delicious, but obviously quite pricy. But that’s not really a surprise in Roka. Insider tip: getting there or home on a weeknight can be a nightmare. I was coming from west London and it wasn’t too bad, but there were massive queues to get into Canary Wharf tube station. This time it was because of the DLR strike, but apparently it’s usually quite bad. Things calmed down around nine. So prepare to stay for the long haul.
