The OXO Tower, South Bank

This year, for my Mum's birthday, I decided to do something a bit different for her present. I'd heard the OXO Tower does really good food and has fantastic views, plus would be something more special. I booked the table and made a faux voucher to put into her card. A few weeks later it was the night of our meal, she met me after work so we could get a few drinks first. We headed straight to South Bank and took a little walk along by the river before stopping for a G&T.

At 8pm we made our way up to the 8th floor to have a drink before we were seated at our table, we chose to have a cocktail this time. I went for a 'Brief Encounter' created with Vanilla Vodka, Rhubarb Liquer, Lemon Juice, Lavender Honey and topped with Brut Champagne, it was delicious! My Mum chose a Raffles Singapore Sling which was also good, I definitely preferred my choice though!

We were then shown to our table and given our menus, there was so much tasty food on the menu it was hard to know what to pick. As I really do love seafood I chose the Devon crab with ginger and coriander, avacado purée and crab sauce. It was lovely and fresh, the flavours were incredible. Apologies for the shoddy lighting in the photos by the way, Mum was a tad embarrassed I was taking photos of my food and threatened to kidnap my camera if I turned the flash on.

For my main I'd been craving a good hunk'a meat all day so it had to be the fillet of beef with Scottish girolles, parmesan gnocchi and golden raisin purée. The beef was cooked exactly how I like it (rare) and was perfectly succulent and juicy, I was almost sad to have to finish eating it!

For the final course we chose to share a cheeseboard, as neither of us particularly like eating desserts. They brought the cheese out on a trolley and you could pick which ones you wanted, I chose pretty much all of the soft cheese to spread onto my water biscuits and eat with some grapes. We washed it down the remains of our Chablis and left the restaurant full and slightly dizzy from the wine! 

I had such a wonderful time at the OXO Tower, the service was impeccable and the food so flavoursome. It's not somewhere to go if you're incredibly hungry as the portion sizes of the food are quite small which may seem disappointing considering the money you pay. The quality is exceptional though, I've never had a nicer fillet of beef than I had there, I would definitely recommend it if you were thinking of going there.