Ruby Blue

Restaurants come and go, with Ruby Blue one of the new arrivals on a prime site that the previous occupants seemed to find untenable. All that has changed and Ruby Blue aims to offer food and entertainment on a scale and in surroundings that are dramatically new, largely by taking the formality out of eating and replacing it with a friendly, collective experience amidst really funky décor. This depends upon a widely drawn series of dishes that lend themselves to shared eating from a menu that gains inspiration via the cuisines of Greece, Spain, India and China. So although starters, main course and puddings are all listed in the usual way, all the dishes can be shared. This, of course, makes for a diversity of flavours that many find a welcome change from the usual more formally defined courses. Some may call it a form of tapas, most find it extends the tastebuds more subtly than that.

So in the course of one meal you could enjoy, for instance, the flavours of duck spring rolls with shredded cucumber and plum sauce, spiced crab cakes with mango salsa and seared beef skewers with toasted sesame and oyster sauce, skillet roasted Cumberland sausage with mustard mash and pan-fried onions, char grilled red snapper with melted peppers, rocket and tomatoes, and an egg tagliatelle with artichokes, roasted mushrooms and Gorgonzola cream. Instead of one pudding you could combine crème brulee and white chocolate cookie with strawberry jam Swiss roll and birds eye custard trifle, laced with a selection of ice cream and sugar curl wafers. In a sense this takes us back to earlier forms of eating when choice was paramount, with intake not far behind, rumoured to be still perpetuated in some dark corners of High Table higher education. Who knows?

The customary range of powerful cocktails awaits your pleasure and with Happy Hour from 5 to 7 pm every day your evening could be off to a very good start. They know how to look after you at Ruby Blue.