WE ORDERED TAKEAWAY FROM TOP RESTAURANT – BUT IT CAME FROM ‘DARK KITCHEN’ MILES AWAY
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Open the Deliveroo app from North London and select ‘Hakkasan’.
Order a £200 takeaway, including grilled Chilean bass in honey (£52), stir-fried black pepper rib-eye beef with merlot (£39) and classic steamed dim sum (£39). Notifications from the app confirm ‘Hakkasan is preparing your order’ and reveal the delivery driver will be collecting the food ‘from Hakkasan’.
But at the top of the page, it adds: ‘Hakkasan is on Editions. Delivery-only kitchens for your neighbourhood.’ And in small type, the address given is ‘Rear Unit, 115 Finchley Road’ – an industrial estate by Swiss
Cottage Tube station.
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The order arrives in 30 minutes.
The driver-tracking feature shows it has travelled from the ‘dark kitchen’ unit, four miles from Hakkasan’s flagship restaurant on Mayfair’s Bruton Street.
The driver, left, confirms he has not collected from Hakkasan’s restaurant.
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Our order is packaged in a black bag embossed with Hakkasan’s gold logo, but the food is in standard plastic containers. The dim sum are cold and soggy, and the sea bass is tasteless and served alongside a flaccid piece of broccoli. The sesame prawn toast, above, is bland and no better than from a supermarket. Hot and sour soup
(£13) is gloopy and leaves an unpleasant taste.