Giraffe

My daughters and I are fans of the Giraffe chain and have always said it was a shame that the nearest ones to us in Harrow were either Belsize Park or Muswell Hill. So you can imagine how delighted we were when the Tesco Watford store was re-​vamped and they stripped out the Kirspy Kreme doughtnuts and café and in came a Giraffe Restaurant!
My elder daughter booked a table for 9 there for Saturday night as it was my granddaughter’s 4^th birthday treat before her party the following day.
We arrived to discover my daughter a bit frazzled because they hadn’t noted the booking down (How on earth? Not very professional!). My son-​in-​law was trying to fit 3 circular tables together in order to seat the 9 of us as not enough of the rectangular tables were free for us to butt them together. The staff realised that we didn’t have enough room where they had attempted to seat us (as we also had a small pram with my 3 week old granddaughter in) and asked us to move to the other end end of the restaurant. No, still not perfect. We were right by the door and we still had 3 circular tables pushed together — hardly ideal!
After this rather poor start to the evening, things were a lot better. If you’ve never tried them, you really must try the edamame (delicious soy bean pods wok fried in soy, chilli & mirin). I have to say this is the main reason for coming to Giraffe in my humble opinion. You get 2 bowls, one with the edamame and another empty one to put the pods once you’ve sucked the beans from them. Could’ve done with some packs of the wipes for our fingers having eaten the edamame (they didn’t give us these until our dessert much later!). Of course there are other nice things on the starters menu like a mixed mezze, soup, olives and some meat things (don’t eat meat out so not memorable for me).
Main meals consist of burgers, grills, fish, pasta and salads — a mixture of Thai, Tex-​Mex and European — fusion cuisine I believe it’s called! At first glance the felafel «deluxe» burger I had didn’t look that big but was very filling! Only criticism was the burger bun fell apart so I ended up using my cutlery to eat it. They also have some reasonably priced cocktails/​mocktails, a variety of smoothies, «softies» which are soft drinks including juices but they also do fresh lemonade with mint which is highly recommended!
Desserts are nice, if you’ve still got room to eat one! Not particularly cheap between £3.95 and £5.95 but when you have to choose between apple and red cherry crumble; banana waffle split; baked white chocolate, mascarpone & passion fruit cheesecake or tiramisu sundae (there are others these are just the ones I was contemplating!) it’s a difficult decision! We didn’t actually order dessert because we had a birthday cake with candles which the waiting staff brought out and sand Happy Birthday (out of key!) to my birthday granddaughter (who actually hates people singing it!).
The waiting staff were pleasant enough. Was difficult to catch their attention at times, even though the restaurant wasn’t full to capacity and one drink had to be requested again because it failed to arrive along with the rest of the drinks.
So a mixed review for this restaurant. I would certainly go back again even if just to have the edamame!
When you consider that there were 8 adults and 1 child, 3 of us had cocktails, some soft drinks and some beer our 3 course meal cost us each £23 which is not bad value.