When invited to Gilgamesh, a trendy, rather elaborate restaurant in Camden to try out their ‘Eat Yourself Beautiful’ collagen menu one has to, of course, accept.
Gilgamesh is smack bang in the middle of Camden…or at least that’s how it felt to me. It’s a huge building with a strange entrance, which involves a red carpet, velvet curtains and an escalator:
Pesky pigeon.
I took along my date, the beautiful hungry Charlotte from Lipglossiping whose first reaction when I told her about our meal was ‘That sounds disgusting’ …Disgusting? No, I said, this will be…different.
This is the menu we were specifically choosing from. The collagen menu is supposed to help give us beautiful skin ladies…is there actually any proof that ingesting collagen helps with that at all? Nah, but tasty food is tasty food!
The Menu:
Gilgamesh is a beautiful building, that’s for sure. Lots and lots of wood carvings all over the walls, on the chairs, fancy doors and the like. No doubt the restaurant has a sexy feel to it…in the dark, one could get up to many things on the wide, half moon chairs.
Our table:
We ordered a variety of things from the menu in the hope there would be something we could eat, starting with the Wheatgrass and Avocado shot. I thought it would be clear green liquid with a wedge of avocado in it but I was wrong:
It’s the drizzle of olive oil that makes it extra odd, but as we downed the shot it was actually not too bad. It tasted like liquid salad basically – definitely more savoury than sweet but not too tangy or sharp.
Next up we had the inside out collagen dumpling – literally one dumpling and not really inside out:
My nana would kill me if I ever paid £6 for one dumpling. This was Charlottes favourite thing of the whole meal…I thought it was a little plain and perhaps needed more chilli or soy. Charlotte ate some of the chilli (I think) so perhaps that’s why hers tasted better.
Our mains!
I had the Bento Box of Chargrilled Salmon…
Ok so it didn’t come in a bento box. I wanted a bento box. What I did get was an extremely pretty dish of perfectly cooked salmon and some sushi-esque moulds of black rice and some taste dressing. But if this filling….nope. I could’ve eaten this five times over…
Check out my plate afterwards! The jelly bits I presume is the collagen:
Charlotte had the beauty bucket of poached chicken:
Once again, where is the bucket?
Charlotte’s dish was nice tender chicken in a dark soup with lots of greens (I think it’s Chinese Kai Lan) and some black rice at the bottom. Aside from the chicken though, Charl did not like the greens or the rice particularly which means I ended up nomming on some of her left overs since the salmon was bite sized…
It was ok. The greens were crunchy and rice in soup just reminds me of being a kid and having nothing but rice in soup for dinner (Chinese ladies, you are nodding right?!).
Finally we tried the pudding which was a Goji berry sorbet.
I personally think that Goji berry is evil and belongs in two places only; my mother’s soup and my nana’s soup…but I am fair game.
I expected the sorbet to be more like….well, sorbet but it was more like a ice cream and looked like pom poms:
So this one was very strange. The goji berry tastes fine at first, sort of sweet, then suddenly – BAM – it goes a bit bitter and BAM – it tastes a bit spicy then BAM – it gives of this almost turmeric-y taste.
So I’m looking at Charl and she’s looking at me and we’re swirling this orange ice cream sorbet stuff in our mouths before finally swallowing.
Did you like that?
Erm. No. Did you?
*Raises eyebrow*
So then I decide that mixing the orange with the white stuff must be what makes it work – the white stuff taste of NOTHING, it is entirely hollow, devoid of anything, of any feeling or flavour. I presume this is to mellow out the goji berry taste so we mix them up and open the hatchet….
Nope. It’s still REALLY odd.
The service was fine – our hostess (called Alana who has started a beauty blog here) was charming and our waiter was good although he did forget my lychee juice and it was impossible to get his attention after our meal had finished (put coat on, stand up, wave arms, look restless, tut a bit, pretend to steal cutlery etc.).
All in all, Gilgamesh is a super pretty place to eat, it is pricy, it’s certainly unusual and good for something a bit different but don’t expect to come out needing to unbutton your jeans (maybe a good thing!!!)
Anyway, did the collagen menu work?
Before meal…
After:
I’m totally looking hotter and so is Charlotte. Honest.
The collagen menu at Gilgamesh is available now.
Dishes range from £6.00 – £16.00.
For more information and to make a reservation, call 020 7428 4922.
Please note that the collagen dishes are not suitable for vegetarians.
Note: We were invited to Gilgamesh for a complimentary meal, for review purposes.
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
LOL, awesome post. I would rather go to Patara though tbh and get my eat on for that money x
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Some germans did do some research that if you take 10,000mg of collagen a day you will eventually see results after like a year or so of taking it.
BUT i’m pretty sure that meal didn’t conatain that much collagen…
And it looks gross. Really, really gross.
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omg soup with rice! that’s still my lazy-day dish lol Did you ever just have plain rice with soy sauce at dinner when you didn’t like what your mum had cooked (or was this just me?!)
The pic of the wheatgrass drink made me gag a little cos I’ve had wheatgrass shot before and it was absolutely disgusting! (must be an acquired taste!)
Did your mum/grandma ever make you white fungus soup and tell you it was good for your skin?? I was thinking maybe that’s got collagen in it, as it’s all gooey when it’s cooked (it’s lucky I like the stuff as I got force-fed it as a child lol)
Sounds like an interesting place to dine, I’d probably want to try it out like I’d want to try out a Heston dish out of curiosity, but I’d probably pop to kfc afterwards lol
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Loiz this is a really interesting post all these dishes are so unusual
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everything looks so yummy!
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