Tuesday, September 10, 2013

Serrata - family run 'Turkish influenced' restaurant in NW London

Hatch End, 'restaurant capital of North West London' said one of our local paper, has lost Hatchets but gained Serrata. The name means saw-toothed or saw-like in Latin, but they created it by merging the names of two family members.
When is it open? For lunch and dinner. If you can't wait for dinner time, and you are on a budget, the Lunch and early evening menu says: Select a starter and a main course for £11.95.
Great friendly people greeted me. A pity that they can't open in the afternoon because of family commitments.
The small restaurant, recently open in August 2013, was busy on a drizzly September Monday evening despite the dark echoing floor, which looked like lino to me. (I dare say it's practical and clean, but I prefer a warm coloured carpet.)
I decided to look at their menu online and choose my next meal.
The menu includes starters such as: falafel, crispy duck, melon with smoked salmon or prawn. Prices range from £4.50 for soup of the day to £9.95 for king prawns. I just bought falafel in Tesco Express, so I'll opt for melon with smoked salmon.
Main courses include classics such as chicken, calves liver, duck, lamb shank, and fillet or ribeye steak served with potato and season veg. Prices frange from £12.95 for chicken, to £18.95 for fillet steak with fat chips. Meat free options include musakka.
Desserts feature baklava, cheesecake, bread and butter pudding, three scoops ice cream for £4.85, either the healthier sounding option of mango sorbet, or pistachio ice cream, or vanilla. May I have one of each please. Fancy something different? Not stuffed dates but stuffed dried apricots and prunes, filled with mascarpone cheese and rolled in walnuts.
Their opening hours are lunch time 12-2.30, evenings from 6 pm. According to their website they are closed Monday lunch.
One page on their website tells the story of Mrs Beeton, whose house was on this location. You could sit at the restaurant table using your handphone to read the Serrata website and Mrs Isabella Beeton's story, a great topic of conversation.
I was horrified to learn that a German bomb destroyed this historic landmark. Here, right in the centre of peaceful rose garden suburbs of Hatch End. Then and now, Hatch End is far from the bomb sites I recall seeing as a child, bombed out buildings in the East End of London near the docks, Commercial Road and industrial areas. I'd actually been thinking how far from Mrs Beeton's English recipes were the varied European restaurants in this locality today. But the website fondly assumes that Mrs Beeton is forever a benign presence, or memory. They like to think she would have smiled kindly on a family run restaurant. What would she have thought of Turkish coffee? (£2.50.)
Location, Uxbridge Road, Hatch End, Pinner, Middlesex
Tel: 0208 428 9973.
More information from
www.serrata.co.uk
email them at info@serrata.co.uk

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