Hawkers Bar and Brasserie
★★★★, 📍1 Skerne Road, Kingston, KT2 5FJ
A strip of lights – dazzling in the gloom of an October evening – guided us towards Hawkers Bar and Brasserie.
Parked amongst characterless apartment blocks and opposite Seven Kings Car Park, Hawkers is not your obvious dinner date destination.
A world away from the cluster of restaurants that populate Kingston Riverside, the location is less ‘buzzy riverside’ and more ‘quiet backwater’ – or so it seemed that dark autumnal night.
Hawkers – named after Kingston’s famous aviation hero – has occupied the ground floor of the popular DoubleTree by Hilton hotel for about three years now.
I always think hotel restaurants are a hard task; I’ve reviewed many. Most are soulless places: unfriendly, overpriced and usually crap. Kitchens tend to hit cruise control when there’s a captive audience.
Which is why I was pleasantly surprised by Hawkers.
We ate from the restaurant menu, where the food was on a par – both in terms of flavour and cost – with any of Kingston’s major chains.
The main courses were the stars of the show. My vegan dish – cauliflower couscous with chargrilled vegetables, almond, curry oil and baba ghanoush (£18) – was lovely: the smoky depths of the baba ghanoush was a perfect foil to the lightness of the couscous.
My partner’s meal of duck breast was also well constructed with two tender slathers of meat set against an autumnal backdrop of roast kasha, salsify, grapes and jus (£16). It was just the right mix of comfort and novelty.
Having also had starters – beetroot and goats cheese salad (£8) and Ham Hock terrine (£7) –we were too full for pudding. Although I did manage to find room for a cheeky amaretto sour, ordered from the very lively cocktail menu (note: there’s a choice of three different types of mojito) where I noticed quite a few local gins on the menu. Nice to see…
The bar menu has sharing snacks, burgers and pizzas. There’s also afternoon tea and Starbucks coffee. They also do a ‘mean’ weekend brunch (the manager’s words, not mine) with a choice of roast dinners and live jazz on a Sunday.
Aside from the food, Hawkers also has more to offer us locals than meets the eye. While I was eating, it struck me that the restaurant – with its long upholstered booths – is perfect for large groups and, being slightly off the beaten track, makes it a good choice for occasions such as baby showers or birthdays.
I liked the décor, too: a happy marriage of art deco and industrial aesthetics rendered in turquoise blues and copper accents.
After going, I recommended Hawkers to a friend of mine who was down from Liverpool and needed somewhere with ample seating and a flexible menu for a family gathering.
“It was perfect,” she said. “There was something for everyone.”
