address: 409 Clapham Park Road, Clapham SW9 9BT
telephone: 020 7737 0722
email: bookings@jimmyspopup.com
LAST CHANCE TO BOOK THIS MONTH This is another incarnation of Jimmy Garcia’s pop-ups and it is only around until 31st August and it is very popular so you do need to book ahead (if more than 9 people you need to phone). There is a small wooden door across the road from Clapham North tube station which leads up amongst a great mix of artificial and real plants to an indoors and outdoors space which absolutely suits the name of “The Secret Garden”. Botanical cocktails abound and it is open on Sundays for a slow waking up or relaxing run down of the weekend.
As I said it is busy and on the night we visited there was a party of 12 in the private dining room which explained much … but read on. The menu is short and we chose salmon tortellini, lamb neck and peas and love for starters, and roast belly pork and chorizo and guinea fowl for the main course. Everything took a long time to arrive apart from the alcohol (a couple of bottles of Crianza). There was a large party upstairs that took a lot of attention and several of the main course choices were now off the menu. But when they arrived they were all interesting although the chorizo and guinea fowl were not up to the same standard as the other dishes.
When I say we waited an age it was a very long time, so dinner stretched out. But as some compensation we were given a mixture of desserts to choose from to complete the meal. There were doughnuts (or perhaps churros) and chocolate, small pots of creamy pudding and some cheesecake type thing. We are writing this trying to remember exactly what they were and have no record of them.
Interesting – we went last night and had pretty much exactly the same experience as you. Good food, but there was a large party of about 12 already seated and we waited an hour for our starters, and then about half an hour for our mains. The restaurant was only half full and we had pre-booked so seemingly they have serious issues with organisation in their kitchen. To be fair, the waitresses were lovely and knocked the drinks off our bill but I wouldn’t jump to recommend it to others. Maybe we were both unlucky as every other review I’ve read has been of the ‘OH MY GOD THIS PLACE IS AWESOME’ variety!