14th December 2010

My first official Christmas lunch this week was with my work chums at Circus in Covent Garden. One of the perks of being the events organiser of my department is I get to choose from all the places that have tasty sounding vegan menus.

However, the vegan menu was changed at literally the last minute which disappointed me to begin with as I had been looking forward to trying quesadilla for the first time. This was replaced by a fresh tomato and butter bean salad, which after all the winter stodge I have been consuming made me realise I have actually been missing my summer staple.

Main was a thai curry, with a delicious although scant sauce, on top of which was served peas, pak choi and green beans. This came with a generous portion of coconut rice which is one of my favs. Overall a very tasty dish and just the right amount of food.

Sadly dessert was disappointing. Even seeing the word sorbet is enough to put me off normally, but I did try a spoonful and found it too sweet. I just find it really unimaginative and boring when fruit or sorbets are offered as the vegan option.

Still two out of three courses is not a bad result but the main reason Circus won the Christmas lunch vote was the entertainment. I think it gets a bit more lively in the evening with fire eaters and burlesque dancers, but we had two more daytime appropriate performances.

We had a guy doing some crystal ball manipulation which was really impressive, he even appeared to make the ball float in the air at one point leading some of my colleagues to think it wasn’t acutally a real crystal ball at all.

Then we had a young lad spinning from a suspended hoop – look at him go!

I enjoy trying to find somewhere different to go for Christmas lunch and the venue was definitely a hit, which now leaves me another  a good few months to seek out somewhere to top it next year. Rumour has it there might be a Henry the VIII themed dinner in my future.

 

Tags: Circus, review