Cabana Wembley review

I was recently invited to the new Cabana restaurant in Wembley for a sneak peak before they opened up to the public!

I first came across this Brasilian concept restaurant at the base of Central Saint Giles; a mixed-use development in the West End which has office space, restaurants & residential. My visits to CSG consisted of taking advantage of free food, an incentive you get when working for Google who are one of the largest tenants in the building.

The restaurant convincingly captures the vibrant look and feel of favelas found in the urban areas of Brazil. The atmosphere contained a symphony of pride about the impressive interior, menu and the fact they’re facing Wembley Stadium!

For starters I went for the Brazilian street food dishes. The 4 cheese pastels with salsa sides and spicy chicken empada. The street food didn’t disappoint.

Funnily enough, with such an exotic menu containing recipes mostly unfamiliar to me, what I had waited to try was a simple side dish. Sweet potato fries, sprinkled with paprika.

When a menu includes a “taste our best-selling” call to action, it’s hard to ignore. So with that being said, the Brazilian Burger (with Picanha, black beans and matchstick potatoes) was next on the menu.

You can add pulled pork to the burger but I chose to order it without to taste how it was intended. Mistakenly, my burger arrived with pulled pork. This is a mistake staff don’t want to make in Wembley as it has a large halal eating non pork loving demographic.

Having said that, I brought this to the staff’s attention and they swiftly apologised and replaced my order. It tasted great and even the General Manager, Guido, came over and apologised.

It was clear how important they take customer experience, the staff really went out of their way to delight.

The food wasn’t going down without any cocktails from the fully fledged cabana hut. The drinks menu was immense so I asked if they could recommend anything with rum (give me anything with rum goddammit). I was given a chilli and mango concoction, Carmen Miranda, great recommendation by the way.

Cabana had the energy of samba running through its service, really enjoyable, refreshingly different food and uberly current; oh, they even have their own iPhone app (wow). Maybe I’ll give it a usability review and write-up about it next time.

Disclosure: Blog on the Block visited Cabana upon invitation by the restaurant.

[button style=”flat” color=”#357ae8″ link=”https://maps.google.co.uk/maps?saddr=Olympic+Way&daddr=Wembley+Park+Blvd&hl=en&ll=51.55825,-0.281632&spn=0.004182,0.007929&sll=51.557569,-0.279969&sspn=0.004182,0.007929&geocode=FUDIEgMdOrv7_w%3BFY61EgMdAbT7_w&dirflg=w&mra=dme&mrsp=1&sz=17&t=m&z=17″ text=”#ffffff” target=”_blank” ]HOW DO I GET THERE?[/button] [box style=”light-blue” ]Social media reactions:

@LDN_TUBE thank you for the great review – hope you’ll be in again soon!

— Cabana (@cabana_brasil) November 19, 2013

 

@LDN_TUBE @cabana_brasil thanks for the great review!

— Jamie Barber (@jamieb1) November 18, 2013

Have you been to Cabana Wembley or are you planning to go? Participate below. [/box]