Kudu — Restaurant in London

This was one of my favourite meals out so far this year and I am sad to see it moving from its fairly local to me SE London location in Peckham to Marylebone in September but equally am excited to see what these guys do next in a new space.

We ate here last Friday for lunch - the weather couldn’t have been more perfect and although we had to book weeks in advance, I was glad to see we had a choice of indoor and outdoor seating. We were dining with our baby so chose outdoors.

The outdoors area is really beautiful and if you get a chance I would definitely choose it over the inside. You wouldn’t know you were on Queen’s Road and the planted trees and flowers make it a real oasis compared to the street.

The staff couldn’t have been more friendly and gave us great service - they dug out a high chair for our baby and then wiped it down for us, they sat us at a bigger table to accommodate the high chair and buggy and they were really knowledgeable on the menu and recommendations for portion sizes etc.

We had the incredibly great value set menu which was £26 for two courses (couldn’t manage dessert sadly). We considered the Best of Kudu menu which was £60 per person but there was a lot of overlap with the set menu so we figured we didn’t need to try it.

So first up - we added the Kudu bread for two and couldn’t choose which of the butters to have so had both. The bread was INCREDIBLE - it was a brioche loaf sweetened with apple juice and seeds. It doesn’t rival the Cliff in Barbados (see my other review) BUT it’s definitely taking the second spot on the podium and is the best I’ve had in London. The melted butters were so good that I was sad when I ran out of bread but it was honestly a good thing as I could have just kept eating them both. My favourite one was the bacon but the seafood butter was still fab.

They also serve a great selection of cocktails and wine and I kicked off with the paloma twist which was like a hybrid between a classic paloma and a margarita.

For his starter my husband had the chicken hearts and I couldn’t believe how much I liked them - the seasoning was super tasty and the meat/heart was cooked perfectly - really tender. The Parmesan churros and miso mayonnaise was also a great choice - really light and fluffy and fresh out the fryer hot.

We chose to pay the extra supplement to have the onglet steak and I am so glad we did as it’s a classic Kudu dish. It was absolutely massive and nothing like I expected - in a good way. The steak was in a really zingy peppercorn glaze/sauce and there was so much I couldn’t finish it all. The truffle potato mousse was the star of the show combined with the enoki mushrooms - it was light and creamy and absolutely delicious.

The only constructive thing I would say is that in terms of plating, the vegetables and mousse are served in a bowl but the hispi cabbage wedge is served very firm and it’s a bit tricky to cut through. The cabbage wasn’t my favourite thing but probably because the mousse and mushrooms were so delicious.

We both love South African wine so happily tried a glass each and were happy with our choices.

All in all, this was a great meal out for us and I’m so glad that it lived up to my...

I hate leaving bad reviews, so not doing this with a light heart. I'd been meaning to try Kudu for ages, so I was very excited to give it a go, particularly after reading all the glowing reviews. My 2 cents:

1. food: the food was a little hit and miss. The bread was phenomenal! The onglet was very tasty and in generous portions, although all the elements of the dish were incredibly chewy (apart from the potato mousse). The salmon was pleasant, but cockles and hearts left us disappointed. Overall, we would have been fine with just the bread and the onglet quantity-wise, but unfortunately we followed the staff's suggestion to order 2 dishes from each category, which was too much.
2. atmosphere/service: this is likely a one off issue, as we were offered to sit at the terrace (heatwave). We accepted as the weather was really nice but the overall atmosphere outside was incredibly underwhelming. We were sat at a tiny table, couldn't even move our chairs because of how tight everything was, but that was the least of our problems. The terrace was not well maintained, the walls were dirty with dust and soil, the plants unruly (this particular plant kept getting into my partner's eyes and dropping leaves on our food). The worst part though were the swarms of greenflies that would attack us every time a new dish was served (they were extra interested in the cockles and the onglet). We spent our whole meal trying to get rid of them, which made for a very unpleasant experience. In hindsight, we should have asked to move inside.
3. price: the cherry on top. When I looked at the menus online, the prices seemed a bit high, but I thought it would still be ok with a starter and 2 mains. The menu online failed to mention the 12.5% service charge. When ordering, it was suggested that we order 2 dishes from each category in order to have a proper meal, which we followed as we didn't know how big the dishes were. This resulted in paying 50£ per person (having ordered no alcoholic drinks). Interestingly, the bill also revealed that the tap water we were served was charged at £1. It all felt a bit sneaky and we were very disappointed at how we ended up paying so much more than we had budgeted for.

Could we have asked to move tables? Yes. Did we have to follow the suggestion of 2 dishes per category? No. But when it's your first time at a place, you sort of trust the staff to have your best interest, and I would expect a place that charged me £100 for food and £1 for tap water, and with waiters seeing us battle with the flies multiple times, to perhaps have cared a little more about our experience, e.g. offer to move us inside or be transparent about costs on their website. Overall, didn't have a great experience given the price we paid and would be...

I had visited the original Kudu as well as Kudu Grill in recent years and both were enjoyable meals (especially Kudu Grill) but as someone living in West London it was quite a trek to get down to Peckham. When I heard about their relocation to Marylebone it was high up on my to do list and I ended visiting around 2 weeks after their opening in September.

The new space is huge, multiples in size of the old locations, and the decor was quite nicely done. Noise levels were super high though even with half the restaurant unoccupied at the point of our early arrival. I was with the wife and kids and we were seated at a corner booth which had a decent amount of space (always nice to get a bit of space in London!). The menu had a lot of familiar items and a few new ones too. Between us we ordered the Kudu bread with 2 butters, the beef tartare, peri peri prawns, monkfish potjie and the T-bone steak with potatoes and carrots. For dessert we had a couple of the KitKat puddings. The food was a bit mixed. The bread and butters were excellent, as were the (huge) prawns. The dessert was a highlight as well and I also enjoyed some of their South African red wines by the glass. The potjie was served with no clay pot, it felt like a fairly standard monkfish dish with a few accompaniments and it was merely ‘ok’ flavour wise. The T-bone was decent enough but one half of the fillet side had been left on the grill too long and was served well done, while the rest of the steak including the rib side was slightly over medium. Our preference is medium rare, but I belatedly realised we never specified this (nor were we asked).

Service was quite friendly. They had a lot of servers around and the meal moved along at a decent pace. The bill for our family dinner came to £383 of which £68 was spent on drinks. Wow, this was a lot more expensive than the meals we had in the prior Kudu locations. Granted we ordered liberally and the more tempting items like the prawns and steak were among the priciest things on the menu, but still... Overall though there aren’t many (any?) restaurants offering more refined / upmarket South African cuisine in central London, so Kudu does hold some appeal in that context. While it has lost some of the charm and “hole in the wall” vibes of the old venues, who can blame them for capitalising on their success. The 4 star rating reflects good service and a nice venue, with some room for improvement on food and questionable value for money.

Note: as of the time of writing the Google listing included reviews predominantly from the old restaurant which are no...