Right on Bishopsgate, just minutes away from Liverpool Street Station, you’ll find Rocket, a modern restaurant/cocktail bar with a stylish after-work drinks vibe, voted in the ZAGAT Top 5 Pizza Restaurants in 2012. But take one look at the menu and you’ll find this is far more than just a pizza restaurant.
With generous-sized starters including a melt in the mouth spicy baby squid, and juicy lamb cakes on a bed of spicy red pepper hummus, these really awaken the appetite for what’s to come next. The selection of salads is to be rivalled, mainly because these are no ordinary Greek or Caesar. Choosing between Surf and Turf Salad with fried prawns, baby squid and seared rare beef, and a unique Fish and Chip Salad on a bed of pickled vegetables and fried capers, is no easy task. But upon recommendation from the very helpful waiting staff, there were no regrets with the choice of Rare Beef and Chip Salad. A complex combination of flavours and textures is achieved with mouth-watering medium rare steak, hand-cut, cooked to perfection chips, crispy tempura fried green beans, crunchy garlic chips and just the right spice fried chilli, all served over fresh rocket with a novel gingered black bean dressing. And not only does the taste sensation more than satisfy, but the American-diner sized portions can’t fail to please. Share one of these monster salads and an award-winning signature pizza and everyone will come away happy. You’ll probably not have room, but my advice is make room for a dessert. The sticky toffee pudding served with salted caramel ice cream is unreal.
Overall Rocket is definitely worth a visit. City workers would be well advised not to just head to your usual somewhere by Liverpool Street Station, but to make the trip this way down Bishopsgate and take advantage of the 2-4-1cocktails available most evenings, and expertly-chosen wine list. Couples and groups would equally be comfortable in this well-presented, relaxed spot, which makes a refreshing change from the usual cramped after-work drinks venues with limited seating and mediocre eats.
