Ted meets Borat

.. oops sorry a bit of dyslexic moment there. I didn’t mean the Sasha Baron Cohen created Borat who bought us the famous mankini - apologies to anyone reading this over breakfast - well actually apologies to everyone for even mentioning it at all … what I actually mean is Rabot - Rabot 1745. It’s a chocolate shop come café in Borough Market (yes I've been stalking in Borough Market again) and it’s got something special that lots of people just pass by and never realise … upstairs there is a handsome restaurant with an outdoor terrace that sits under the cover of the soaring arches of the crown court market, in the heart of Borough itself.  As lovely as the surroundings are it’s the food that you come upstairs for, and it’s here you find that chocolate features as an element in the cocktails and the entire food menu.

Chocoholics dream, sure in theory … but would it be too much??? I decided to test the waters with a Negroni made with chocolate (cacao) flavoured gin. The chocolate was definitely there but not overpowering or weird, so by the second sip I was doing the “pleasantly surprised” head nodding.

To start the Doll chose mini Yorkshire Pudding with rare beef, white chocolate mash and a cacao red wine jus and pronounced it well cooked and delicious.  Apparently Yorkshire Pudding can be tricky to neither over or under-cook – who knew this about the Sunday roast lunch staple. I went for the rare seared cacao gin cured salmon, prosecco jelly with fennel and lime tonic salad. Now if that sounds like quite a mouthful, it was, several in fact, lovely balanced flavours with the gin giving the salmon an earthy touch that was nicely offset by the rest of its plate fellows.

Mains were a 9-hour braised lamb shoulder, cacao beer pickled onions, garlic mash, cacao pesto, balsamic glazed dish and a cacao crusted pork, maple pecan glazed bacon, with more cacao infused ingredients that I didn’t actually read - I say this not because I was disinterested, but the font on the menu was tiny - 6 point at best, the light very low, and the Doll almost burnt out one of my retinas when she got out the handy high powered torch app on her iPhone to help me read the menu.

Was I blind-sided by the chocolate restaurant? yes ... but not enough to go on and create my own “elastic waist band crisis” by having dessert … would I go back again … absolutely … this time I would sit on the terrace …