Restaurants Reviews

The Rum Kitchen

Growing up in New Mexico made me something of a sun-worshipper. I live for warm spring and hot summer days. And then I moved to Atlanta, and a plethora of sandy shores were only a few hours drive away. Basically, I’ve been weather spoiled. And since moving to England, beach holidays are pretty much my constant answer to “if you could travel anywhere, where would you go?” 

But since I am in London, saving up money for some grown-up life events, only dreaming of soft, beachy shores and blistering sun, I decided to try The Rum Kitchen in Notting Hill and bring a bit of the Caribbean to me instead.  It was the weekend, and I had time to kill so my first thought was obviously cocktails. Sam had the “lesser of two weevils”, a Red Stripe and Old Jamaica ginger beer shandy topped off with Mount Gay and a dark rum float.  I expected it to taste extremely potent, since it’s essentially beer with rum. It didn’t. This could be dangerous. I opted for the “classic rum sour” with rum, lemon, sugar and egg white. I like my cocktails sour, what can I say? This one had a really noticeable kick. There was no pretence made about the fact that you were pretty much drinking straight rum. I approve. 

Food had to be ordered fairly quickly, if only to start soaking up some of the alcohol in my empty stomach. The Rum Kitchen had me at “pulled pork bun”. After that, I had eyes for nothing else on the menu. My pulled pork was so tender, packed with flavour and a fair bit of heat, topped off with crispy shallots, a jerk BBQ sauce (the source of most of the heat), and a chilli vinegar slaw. I also had an order of sweet potato fries which were incredible. I already love sweet potato fries, but these were lightly battered before they were fried and I could eat them every day of my life. Sam had the jerk chicken burger with scotch bonnet mayo. He opted for the double version which was a generous portion to say the least and so tasty. We also split a side of the pulled pork, because the pulled pork literally was good enough to eat twice in one meal. 

To finish off we split a slice of chocolate rum cake. It came with lashings of chocolate and caramel sauce, plus a side of ice-cream. Basically, what’s not to love? And we still had room for two last cocktails. Sam had the “pre-emptive strike” an espresso martini, adapted with rum and a hint of dark chocolate. Basically, it was super strong and should have been a downer, but all the caffeine was forcing you to be really, really irritatingly energetic. I had the “silver pineapple” which was a vanilla pineapple fizz with Atlantico Platino. This was my favourite drink of the afternoon, it was quite delicate and fruity, but it still packed a punch!

bar chairs dogdecor at the rum kitchen drinks menured stripe shandyrum sourjerk chicken burgerjerk chicken pulled pork bunpulled porkthe rum kitchensweet potato friesside of pulled porkchocolate rum cakechocolate rum cake 2      last two drinks          

For a bit more of an authentic experience, you could be sipping your own rum cocktail on holiday on a Caribbean beach somewhere, but this is as close as I can get for the time being! 

Anyone planning on traveling to a tropical locale any time soon? If so, any space for me to tag along? I can fold my self up into a really tiny ball.

This post was done in collaboration with Elegant Resorts, but all opinions are my own. 

You Might Also Like