The top line: The team behind West London Chinese restaurant group Good Fortune Club has opened Banquet 88, an upmarket Cantonese restaurant in St Katharine Docks. Just a short walk from the Tower of London, the waterside development is a stronghold for branded restaurant groups, with operators including Côte, Zizzi, Emilia’s Crafted Pasta and Slug & Lettuce. Banquet 88 is therefore something of an outlier, although its high-spec fit-out gives it the look and feel of a multi-site brand.
On the menu: With a mission to bring back traditional ‘big table, big menu’ Cantonese dining, Banquet 88 offers an extensive selection of dishes that goes particularly deep on dim sum. Alongside classics are more premium and less familiar options such as crystal scallop dumplings, morel mushroom jade siu mai and black truffle xiao long bao with striking jet-black skins. There is also an unusually large selection of cheung fun (silky steamed rice noodle rolls), with fillings including Iberico pork char siu, wagyu beef and prawns wrapped in red rice skin. Elsewhere, the menu continues the balance between familiar and less familiar Cantonese dishes, with options ranging from chilled jellyfish with aged vinegar to claypot chicken with black truffle and abalone. Desserts include green grape and coconut pudding. The result is a menu that is a far cry from the standard Anglo-Cantonese offering, even if staples such as sweet and sour pork and Peking duck remain present and correct. There are more than 200 dishes in total, although diners can opt for set menus priced between £38 and £68 per head to help them navigate the sheer breadth of choice.
The vibe: The unusually large menu is at least partly explained by the scale of the operation. Occupying the former Ping Pong site, Banquet 88 seats 140 guests inside, with a further 10 covers on its terrace overlooking the docks. There is also a private dining room that can accommodate up to 50 guests.
And another thing: Eagle-eyed restaurant historians will spot a curious object between Banquet 88 and Honest Burgers: a branded menu box for defunct steak chain CAU. Remarkably, it remains in situ nearly eight years after the Gaucho spin-off collapsed.
Unit 2 Commodity Quay, St Katharine Docks, E1W 1AZ