Belly — Restaurant in London

What a high quality meal full of interesting and delicious dishes! Enjoyed my experience here a lot!

We had a table booked here for 6 people for 5:30 on a Saturday evening. Its quite a cozy restaurant so I would recommend making a booking in advance for a bigger group but if it's just 2 or 3 people you could potentially risk just showing up.

All the staff were so nice and friendly! Constantly cracking jokes and ensuring that we had everything we needed.

We started very quickly by getting the Beef Fat Fries. Perfect chips 🤤 crispy outside and soft middle. Lightly salted and served with an excellent sauce which I genuinely finished off with a spoon. The sauce had a prevalent vinegar taste in it with a balance of sweet as well.

Then for starters we got the Tempura Cod Pandesal. Here's the thing, all the dishes are good and cooked well with a lot of flavour but there are some things that I would probably skip the next time. This is one of them. It was kinda like an elevated fillet o fish 😂 the cod was lovely and light, the Pandesal was sweet with a nice sourness as well, and the sauce had a kick to it that really brought the whole thing together. However I wouldn't pay £17 for it and get it again. Also not great for sharing.

We also got the Smoked Aubergine and Heirloom Tomatoes. Again wouldn't order this again. I could taste the quality of the ingredients but this dish was on the colder side and didn't have anything distinct about it like the other dishes.

The cured scallops were amazing! Its all in the great coconut cream and chilli space. What a fantastic combination of flavours that left me almost licking the shell to get all the sauce off.

We also got the Smoked Trout Kinilaw which was very fresh tasting. Perfectly prepared ingredients making every mouthful a delight.

For the mains we got the seafood 'caldereta'. The prawn head aiolli really made this dish. Again they really perfected they're sweet, chilli, and salt ratio. The other elements of this dish were more or less a delivery system for this amazing aiolli!

Then we got the Woodland Mushroom 'Arroz Caldo'. After mixing the egg into the dish, it was super rich. The risotto was perfectly cooked for me

Finally for dessert, we got the Ube Tiramasu and the Frozen Custard Profiterole. The Tiramasu was awesome and perfect for sharing. The Profiterole on the other hand is more of a solo treat cause it's hard to split up.

To sum up, would come here again, will recommend to others! It's a little on the pricier side so definitely a treat kinda meal. Get the scallops, the seafood, and the...

Honestly, quite disappointed. From the get-go, the menu has several formatting and grammatical errors which is just not up to par with the quality that is insinuated by the prices. From a place that prides itself on being “elevated”, the menu and environment are just as part of the dining experience so we started on a bad note. Whilst ordering, we — filipinos — were referring to the dishes using the filipino names, which are also on the menu (“bicol express”, “arrozcaldo”) and our server didn’t seem to recognise those names, almost “correcting” us by asking “the scallops? the rice?”. I found that to be very disheartening because I was looking forward to tasting food from my home land and for our server to not even know the dishes’ names was, again, disappointing. The food itself is beautifully presented but overall the flavours are muddied and overly salty. Filipino food can be on the heavier side but we do have lightness and brightness with the implementation of very basic ingredients, which i feel was lost in an attempt to perhaps cater to a western palate? The nori chips were like a sodium overload, and whilst I appreciate that they are supposed to be coupled with the tartare, a dish that is served “deconstructed” should have elements that can stand individually. the arrozcaldo rice was either over or undercooked, but either way it was grainy and not pillowy mushiness that is staple to the dish, plus again heavy on the salt though not unbearable. Needed ginger or green onion or more vinegar for a zing. The bicol express scallops were quite gorgeous, definitely the star of the show for me, no further notes. The ube of the tiramisu becomes completely suppressed by the raspberry powder and what we assumed to be a licor or syrup, which is such a shame as ube’s mellow and soft sweetness is what we were looking forward to in a decadently textured dessert (though i found it to be structurally unstable and lacked “bite”). visually, it’s a bit sludgey and i think it could benefit from less sauce and certainly less raspberry. The servers were kind and made sure our water was filled, and i liked the decor and the bathroom. The lady/femme (be not I to assume) who brought us the menus and our bill was very sweet and had a...

A really wonderful find with really inventive concepts. Kinilaw and scallops were really yummy. Calamansi ice tea was great. The ube tiramisu was one of the nicest desserts I’ve ever had in this city and id return just for this. So so perfect. And im incredibly picky about desserts. The profiterole was nice in concept however it didn’t hit the mark, it wasn’t representative of what a profiterole is in any way really: the pastry was caramelised and the frozen custard was a weird choice in combination with the hot caramel. The flavours were good but the differing temperatures and moisture levels kinda messed up the pastry. It was also really small for its price. The caramel was a wonderful flavour but the saltiness was maybe too intense for something vanilla flavoured, would be more suitable to something with a richer flavour like chocolate. The mains were generally enjoyable. The chicken was cooked nicely and the sauce was nice too, but could’ve been elevated a lot more for its price. It wasn’t that different to a standard beurre blanc. The calderata’s sauce was lovely but the portion of seafood was far too small for its price point, and the quality of seafood wasn’t either (good, but not amazing). A few of the muscles tasted weird, but I know this isn’t necessarily within the chef’s control. It also needed more lemon to go with it for balance, and maybe another acidic element. The service was wonderful, and the restaurant played good music. The atmosphere of the restaurant didn’t represent something that ultimately cost £157 between two people though. I think this place is worth a visit, regardless, as it’s some of the more inventive food I’ve had in this city in recent years. It really balances the fusion between Filipino and French...