StreetXO restaurant review: a riot of excess

Some restaurants aim to entice customers with simple but well-presented food, while others wow diners with theatrics and flair. StreetXO falls unambiguously into the latter camp – and the show begins from the moment you walk through the front door.

Greeted by a man wearing what looks like a straitjacket, my dining partner and I are welcomed loudly and enthusiastically (perhaps even flirtily) before being shown downstairs.

As it turns out, the entire StreetXO team are dressed as asylum patients, circus ringmasters or S&M bondage enthusiasts. And that's just the beginning of the dramatics as you enter the bar area.

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Circus Maximus

Fancy your cocktail in a glass the size of your head? Or maybe served in a prosthetic heart, a Chinese takeaway box or a hollowed-out coconut? If so, you have come to the right place. And even if you might have opted for more conventional cocktail receptacles before visiting StreetXO’s brilliantly over-the-top CircusXO bar, you'll be won over by head bartender Nikolai Clerc’s penchant for the showily unconventional.

Excessive as it all is, the enthusiasm of the team is infectious and it would take a hard heart not to enjoy drinking from a glass the size of a fishbowl by the end of your first glass the size of a fishbowl. It is all too much… gloriously too much.

My favourite drink of the evening is unquestionably the Tokyo-Jerez, which comes served with a prawn’s head, which the bartender encourages me to slurp on before taking a sip of my cocktail. The crustacean adds a shot of pure umami to the herb-infused sherry and smoky soda drink that follows.

The Tokyo part of the cocktail’s title comes from the addition of yuzu juice, a citrus fruit popular in Japan. Sucking the brains out of a prawn’s head may sound unappetising, but it works unexpectedly well with this refreshing cocktail.

Street life, it’s the only life I know

After finishing at the bar, we make our way through to the restaurant. If you want to be right in the centre of the action, head for one of the seats directly overlooking the kitchen. For a quieter experience, slide into one of the leather booths that line the edges of the room.

There is an à la carte menu if you have specific preferences, but to get a wider taste of the wonders worked by head chef Dabiz Muñoz, go for one of the tasting menus. This is not an exhortation to spend a load of money: StreetXO has an express lunch tasting menu for only £25 that takes you on a whistle-stop tour through Muñoz’s greatest hits.

At the other end of the spectrum, the chef’s tasting menu beckons for £100 per person, offering nine full courses. We aim for the more moderate degustation menu (which admittedly still comes to eight courses), order a couple of beers, and settle in.

The first two courses arrive at the same time and take the form of light seaside bites. We kick off with “Irish Oysters on Holiday to Acapulco!”, which is a thing of beauty. Served in a bowl propped on what looks like the charred remains of a campfire, the four oysters are swimming in a lime green gazpacho of jalapeño & tomatillo verde, with drops of chlorophyll-rich olive oil.

Beside them is Muñoz’s interpretation of fish and chips – eight delicate slices of raw Japanese yellowtail, with a dollop of hot sauce suspending a dried piece of yuzu and some small Rice Krispies-like pieces of batter. The lot are scooped up by hand and popped into the mouth, in a delicious sticky mess.

The mess continues into the next course, where Muñoz goes totally Jackson Pollock with his Pekinese dumplings, a wonderfully chaotic plate starring crunchy pig's ear dumplings on a painterly mix of strawberry hoisin, alioli and pickles.

The ramen of foie gras with barbecued Guinea fowl that follow is a touch less exciting than I expected, but hot on its heels is another showstopper: the “Galician Octopus who spoke Indian”. Thick tentacles topped with squid ink crackers wrap their way around a liquid centrepiece of roasted tomatoes and butter masala. It's a dish I would happily eat daily.

The savoury bombardment comes to a climactic finale with a dish named “The Lamb who travelled: Paris-Lima-Canton”. Muñoz’s slow-cooked milk-fed baby lamb shank is drizzled with a zigzag of hot sauce and served on a bed of pomme purée à la Robuchon edged by wisps of paper-thin pink cabbage.

To finish things off, Muñoz delivers a dessert of the day, presumably according to his whim. For us, he prepares a deconstructed cheesecake, served in an old-school ice-cream container and broken down into its constituent parts; a dollop of puree here, a wafer there, all on a bed of thick cream. Delicious.

A special mention must be made for the fabulous waiters, who dazzle and charm from the moment we arrive. In a place as showy as StreetXO, it takes a special kind of character to match the extravagance of the décor and the ambition of the kitchen, but this team manage it.

From food to service, Muñoz’s restaurant is a riot of excess. And while sometimes less may be more, in the case of StreetXO, more is most definitely more.

Coming soon

For a taste of StreetXO and a dose of art, the restaurant is partnering with the Mayfair Art Weekend to present The Mayfair Modern Art and Lunch Experience on Saturday 30th June.

The event will comprise of a tour of some of London’s best-known contemporary art galleries followed by lunch at StreetXO. For £90 per person, guests will get a seven-course meal including StreetXO’s Pekinese dumplings and Steamed XO Club Sandwich as well as the Cheesecake ice cream mentioned above. For more information visit streetxo.com or www.mayfairartweekend.com

StreetXO, 15 Old Burlington St, London W1S 2JR; streetxo.com