Rocket

Had a Christmas do here in 2011 with work. We had a large table on the top floor of the restaurant. The decor is very nice and certainly has a modern feel to it. The food was quite average and no different from your traditional Christmas lunch menu. We were given some half decent complementary crackers and the atmosphere was great but a little quiet given the festive time of the year. Table space was a little cramped. Would only return on a special occasion or on invite.

I thought I should don a little grey dress to come into the big bad City and blend in but that really wasn't necessary for lunch at Rocket as whilst it is populated with people in suits the atmosphere is colourful and bubbly. The astro-turfed entrance and Fornasetti plate wallpaper on the ground floor signals its intent and it just gets quirkier the higher up you go with a top floor restaurant that's part grandma's sitting room and part Ideal Home exhibition. The clientele is mixed with tables of friends, casual client lunches and a few couples, which gives it a friendly buzz. Service is unhurried and unintrusive but pretty competent: when our food order was running a little late, someone came over to tell us it would be on its way and to bring something to nibble on in the meantime. The menu is a bit different without being scarily expensive with not a main course over £17 which is unusual round here. There are a range of very unboring salads (like roast beef and chips salad) as well as straightforward pizzas. I had fishcakes. Now for City slickers that sounds rather pedestrian I admit as it's the dish everyone resorts to when they are out on interminable networking lunches but trying to be healthy. But these really were good, I mean they actually tasted of salmon and were enormous and chunky. My 2 girlfriends struggled to make it through their pizzas, not because they didn't like them but because they were so large. So for £18 a head (service, bread and a couple of soft drinks included) it was a good value feed. Plus it's easy to book, if a little hard to find (look for the arched arcade leading through to the courtyard). Does this place blow the lights out? No. But it's a reliable, well-priced, interesting little ray of light in the Heart of Darkness.