Nama, Liverpool: ‘Are food halls ever a satisfying experience?’ – restaurant review | Grace Dent on restaurants

It has a fine pedigree, but this Japanese-inspired fish stop in a food hall delivers one-note cooking backed by too many notes from a roaming brass band

At the GPO in Liverpool, a man on stilts clomps and sways approximately a metre from my table, banging a huge drum in time to a chaotic, brass ensemble version of Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This) by Eurythmics. Are these, I wonder, optimum conditions to appreciate delicate stone bass sashimi by some of the north-west’s top restaurateurs?

It’s Friday night in the repurposed general post office building, which is now a large, bustling food hall featuring many vendors, different cuisines and communal eating. Each of these halls across Britain has its own rules and quirks, and the GPO is one of the better, sleeker operations, because it allows table-booking and ordering by app, and also employs lots of affable, prompt staff to whisk plates of Jailbird’s Nashville-style fried chicken and Ferrero Rocher sundaes to your booth.

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from The Guardian https://ift.tt/2ZxPl84