The Joker of Penton Street

We came here for a Christmas meal (costing £25 per head) and used the upstairs room…
Initial impressions were good, it’s a quirky location with framed photographs of comedians cluttering one wall, and large brightly painted clown pictures on others. Not so great if you have a phobia.
The tables were rustic looking and it had a lot of cute little features which would lead me to give the venue a 4 out of 5, and perfect if you were just there for a meeting or a drink.
However we were very disappointed with the meal.
The starters were great, with lots of lovely salad and fresh ingredients.
I opted for the Blini’s with salmon and beetroot. This came with a lovely salad (almost a side salad) garnish, and was lovely!
However it went downhill from there. Having talked to my colleagues I don’t think anyone was happy with the main meal. The leg of lamb was a few pieces of lamb swimming in a sea of sloppy mash — the lady next to me left part her sea bass because it wasn’t cooked. My beef was over cooked, grey, chewy and tasteless and I had 3 small roast potatoes and a carrot with tasteless gravy.
This also took a long time to come out. We had a table of about 30 and by the time the last meals arrived, the people who got their’s first had finished. I’m not sure if this is because of the lag, or because the main meal portion size was too small.
They didn’t even have salt and pepper on the table.
The desert was terrible. I ordered a strawberry tiramisu (I’ve added a picture), as you can see this sponge cake was as far from what you might expect as you can possibly be.
Really not impressed at all and I would suggest you avoid the food here.

I’ve been here twice in the last two weeks and both times have been bad. The first time our food order didn’t get put through and we were left waiting for 30 minutes for our food to arrive, after we checked whether it had actually been put through. The guy was quite rude too and didn’t offer an apology. The second time there was no space (two long tables had been put together to make a large table — don’t know what the idea was behind this but there were only five people sitting at the table). We asked if there were any chairs we could use so as to sit at another table with other people but so we didn’t overcrowd them. Again a rude response and no willingness to cater to their customers. Never again!

Check out the pop-​up Tongue ‘N Cheek. Amazing burgers and everything else. The heartbreaker patty is one of a kind.