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Category: Jazz & Blues [Edit]
111 Camden High StCamden Town NW1 7JN
Neighbourhood: Camden Town
020 7387 5277
- Nearest Transit:
-
Camden Town (Northern)
Camden Road (London Overground)
- Hours:
Mon-Wed 8:00 - 0:00
Thu 8:00 - 1:00
Fri 8:00 - 3:00
Sat 10:00 - 3:00
Sun 10:00 - 0:00
- Price Range:
-
££
- Accepts Credit Cards:
- Yes
- Parking:
- Street
- Good for Groups:
- Yes
- Good for Children:
- Yes
- Wheelchair Accessible:
- Yes
- Outdoor Seating:
- No
- Music:
- DJ, Live
- Best Nights:
- Thu, Fri, Sun
- Alcohol:
- Full Bar
- Smoking:
- Outdoor Area/ Patio Only
- Coat Check:
- Yes
14 reviews for The Blues Kitchen
All Reviews
The Blues Kitchen
31/7/2010
There is only one reason, and one reason alone, this place gets three stars--their Mint Juleps. Being a Kentucky native, I strive to find authentic things from the motherland (because Kentucky is really its own crazy nation of bible thumpers and republicans...sigh) and sadly, this is the most authentic Mint Julep I've found in London. The reason? Most other bars use syrup to sweeten it, but the Blues Kitchen uses sugar as my forefathers intended. Juleps take time, not this easy-to-use syrup crap.
Anyway, I love the Juleps, a bit pricy but worth it on homesick days (or for dates...my date thought they were amazing). I agree that the music was more rock when it should have been southern BLUES, but this is evened out in that the bartenders let us try a brand new drink they'd just finished making...win! Overall, I wasn't that impressed but would come back for one drink to start the night.
The Blues Kitchen
26/6/2010
2 Check-ins Here
This was my first time here and having spent loads of time at Charlotte Street Blues, I must say that I don't think I'll be coming back.
When I first arrived, I was accosted by the nasty security guards at the entrance who demanded to see some ID. 1. I'm 27 and refuse to believe that I look younger than 18. 2. This is a blues bar not a high end club. What's with the attitude. Security Fail.
Once I got in, I ordered a drink - Tenessee Iced Tea and spinach dip with tortilla chips to nibble one. My drink tasted medincial and not in a good way. It was like I was drinking a glass full of Ricola. Ick. The spinach dip was ok but it was steaming hot to the point that I almost burnt my mouth. Once it cooled down though, it was pretty tasty.
The music was not at all blues. If anything it was more alternative rock which was kind of disappointing.
Plus I somehow managed to end up at a table with a guy who decided that it was a really great idea to start telling racist jokes. BTW, I had just met this guy 2 minutes earlier. He then proceeded to interrogate me as to whether I was there to pick up a guy. Um, if I was, I certainly wouldn't end up with you!
The Blues Kitchen
23/4/2010
If you are looking for great American food and amazing live Blues acts throughout the week... well, I'm afraid this is not your place. Blues Kitchen in Camden disappoints in many ways, most of which have been described in painstaking detail in previous reviews ("Would you like some brunch and a side of vagina with that!? - Lizzie, 6/3/2010).
HOWEVER- this is one of the hottest places for up and coming musicians to come and jam on Sunday nights (19:00-midnight). The two hosts interchange every Sunday, and the difference that each of them brings to the quality of the jam is remarkable.
The first, a loudmouthed, crazy drummer with long hair gets the crowd (both musicians and spectators) in the right mood. He also has a particular knack for choosing the right musicians to play together. (Since it's a jam, musicians are constantly rotated in and out and it's up to host to decide who plays with whom).
The second host looks like he could be about 15 years old and doesn't quite pull it off. Still a good night, but not nearly as fun as when crazy drummer dude hosts.
If you like the Wednesday jam at Charlotte St Blues, I would definitely recommend checking out the Blues Kitchen on Sundays. If you play the keys like me, you may need to bring your own axe as there's not always a keyboard when the drummer hosts. See you there!
Daniel
The Blues Kitchen
6/3/2010
Would you like some brunch and a side of vagina with that!? Seriously, I sit down in here this morning and one of the waitresses leans over the table next to me putting her tight gusset in full view of both me and my dining buddie. Great on a Friday night out but a little stomach churning on Saturday morning with a god awful hangover.
The Blues Kitchen just disappoints, I came on there opening day for "The best brunch in Camden" and was so disappointed I decided not to review it and try again when they had been going for a while. So I tried today only to receive a plate of boring hash browns, over fatty bacon and a small portion of everything. Oh and did I mention the OJ from concentrate? I paid more for a glass than I would normally do for a carton down the shop.
The decor is so funny, it's like TGI Fridays for Shoreditch Twats. So disappointing from a place I had such high hopes for. It's not terrible or awful, it's just not for me, or my money. I won't be back again during the day.
Listed in: Nah...not so much, Camden Joints
The Blues Kitchen
6/3/2010
1 Check-in Here
When it comes to all things Americana, I like 'em big. Big beaches, big malls, big cars, big.... Okay I'll leave it there. What the Blues Kitchen does not do is a big breakfast. When I order an American breakfast with pancakes, BBQ beans, eggs and hash brown, I want to have to unbutton my pants when I leave
I left here hungry. And £13 poorer.
The breakfasts here are a major disappointment. Two small pancakes delicately placed next to a ramekin of beans, one egg and two store-bought hash browns. It was like nouvelle cuisine! Now I've never been to the South but I doubt they do things delicately there.
Lizzie G. is right when she said this is like the TGI Fridays of Blues. It has all the right decor; fake peeling wallpaper, leather booths, big horns hanging from the ceiling, dark wood, grungy waitresses.
But look closer and it is all so IKEA blues from a box. Everything is so clean and inoffensive, the bathrooms don't even look like you could catch any diseases there! And the 'blues' music? So mainstream, so faux bluesy, so playing Tom Waits??
If you want to experience the blues without any of the seedy, juke joint oppression from which it was born, go to The Blues Kitchen. It's so big and empty, you won't have to get down and dirty and rub shoulders with any undesirables. But you won't find me there.
Listed in: Camden, innit?
The Blues Kitchen
14/11/2009
Let's start at our default 3 stars and see where we go...
* Cool vibe, nice decor. + 1 star
* "Reservation for 14? What reservation for 14?" "The one you confirmed to me by email." "We don't have any reservation for 14." - 1 star
* Good mojito. + 1 star
* Not much mojito for £7. - 1 star
* Seriously good effort at service recovery by a friendly and efficient waitress. + 1 star
* Very good blackened shrimp starter, albeit portion on the small side. + 1 star
* "I ordered a gumbo, everyone else has their food, where is it?" Then a 15 minute delay waiting for it to materialize. - 1 star
* Flavourless and small portion of gumbo. - 1 star
* And you want £20 for the food?? - 1 star
A distinctly 2 star experience. It's a shame, since they're doing some things pretty well, but the management failures in handling reservations, the kitchen not coping well with large orders, and the spotty quality of the food means I'd not come back.
Listed in: Bar me up, Scotty!
The Blues Kitchen
17/12/2009
1 Check-in Here
Second trip to Blues Kitchen, first time was the trip already reviewed by Vicky and Matt. It had it's hiccups, but I really enjoyed the food, so I'm back for round two before submitting my review.
Went for lunch this time. Wasn't busy, but the service was still questionable. Asked one of the wait staff for a table for one, he responded sure and walked back to the wait station. I presumed he was looking at a seat map for reservations to determine what table to throw me at, or perhaps grabbing a menu. He talked with a colleague for a bit, then ambled back after a minute or two. ...with a receipt in hand and question in mouth:
him: "so you ordered the burger, right?"
me: ...um, I haven't ordered anything yet, I'm waiting for you to seat me, table of one, remember?
him: "oh, yeah... um... sit wherever. ...except the big table"
Same type of thing happened after being seated. He called out, I'll bring you a menu. ...it took awhile to arrive and I noticed him twice do a double take looking at my table and realizing he hadn't brought it, started to walk towards the wait station, and then somehow get distracted in the 10 feet he had to walk and forget.
As for the food, less impressed than last time. I got the hot link po'boy. There was way too much mayo, so much that my first bite into the sandwich resulted in one of the links flying out of the bread like a greased pig. The chips were dry and the coleslaw (from a special recipe I'm told) was bland.
On the plus side, the music and general atmosphere contributed to by other patrons was good. I probably won't come back for food for quite some time, but I think I will for the live blues purported to be had.
Listed in: Life in Camden Town
The Blues Kitchen
23/10/2009
Yelpers to try this place with? ..Check!
Alarms set for 6am? ..Check!
Failure to wake up til 10 minutes after I should have left? ..Check!
Ability to thus not look properly at directions and walk the opposite way? ..Check!
So, great start to the day to check this place out, When I did groggily (I was out of cigarettes) walk in through the doors to this surprisingly large place, the first thing of notice is, well, the size. It looks like they can handle quite a crowd, so I'm curious to see what use they'll make of this!
The tables are quite sizeable, able to handle the amount of seats/sofas without too much problem. There's wifi, albeit slow, friendly staff, an appealing breakfast menu, and music quite enough that I wasn't quite sure if it was actually playing or just my imagination (I like music that doesn't take over the conversational abilities of the group, but I do like it louder than impossible-to-hear!).
Prices are a little higher than I'm used to for breakfast, at £7.50 for a 'Full English/American Breakfast', £4-5 for a milkshake, and.. I didn't actually look at coffee prices, silly me. Though the breakfasts come with a choice of tea or coffee (which we weren't actually offered? But judging by our bill, they included anyway). In fact, the bill looked cheaper than it should have been, but I didn't inspect it in enough detail to work out why. Will thank them rather than complain, of course!
Now, Leon C, Lizzie G and I, having never had an American breakfast, decided to try this out. American style pancake, with a choice of blueberry or maple syrup, egg (you choose how you want it done), toast, hash browns, mushroom, BBQ beans and baaaaccccoooonnnn. Oh, and more butter than you can shake a loaf of bread at!
They gave us, for whatever reason, a sausage instead of the beans - no complaint from me - and seemingly actually cooked some blueberries inside Leon's pancake, too. After instructions from Laura and Miriam on how to actually compile the pancake heart attack, I think we all drifted off into a little slice of heaven for a bit. I know bacon is good enough to go with, well, pretty much anything - but the mix of an american pancake, bacon and maple syrup seemed crazy! And it was! But crazy GOOOOOOD, yo! With my egg scrambled and surprisingly good, after a while of struggle, all but the hash browns and tomato went down with some ease, in spite of our little Americans telling us how un-American it all actually was.
But who cares how it was? I have some fatass (and I will have one of them at this rate, too!) cravings for more of these pancakes! Seriously! Please!
The coffee wasn't at all bad either, but the stars of the show for me were by far the pancake/bacon/maple syrup combination, and the oreo milkshake I had. Ohmygod. I've had oreo milkshakes in numerous venues in and around London - it's one of those things I just have to do when I see them - but I think this one actually topped them. It was a lot thicker than most of the ones I've had (which means, with oreos, constant straw removal and suckage, as well as spoon using. Mmmm, spoonage!), which is frankly how it should be. A major plus there!
The only problems I had with the place was the fact it was uninspiring. With a sign above the bar stating, quite boldly, "The best breakfast in north London" (I believe that was the wording - correct me if I'm wrong Leon), I don't think I could go that far (especially being only their second day of serving breakfast). The decor of the place felt like they tried a little too much, too; With half faded/torn up posters on the wall, which just didn't really fit and was clearly (as they usually are, but this one painfully so) doctored to look that way.
It's not to say that the experience wasn't enjoyable, it certainly was, but I'd need to be going there with people, rather than the kind of thing I'd head off to go to on my own (ignoring the fact I live over an hour away, of course). In fact, it's probably more the kind of place I'd put forward as a venue for brunch before a shopping trip with friends, than somewhere I'd recommend for breakfast on a remotely normal day.
All in all, the place could go somewhere pretty nice with this, especially once they've been trading a while longer and fine tuned everything to perfection. I do hope it does, because I could use some excuses to conveniently end up sat here with more pancakes. And oreo milkshakes.
Mm, oreo.
The Blues Kitchen
11/3/2010
I think this the type of place where the "funness" of the people you're with is directly related to whether of not you'll enjoy it. Go with a boring group of people, you'll hate it, go with a fun group and you'll love it.
I went along last night for a private party and was with a cracking gang of guys and gals - the kind of people you could take with you to a water filtration plant and you'd still have a good time.
The decor is a bit 'slap dash, this is our roughshod approximation of a New Orleans Blues bar', but the one thing that saves it is the excellent light fixtures and chandeliers. Ace. There was one chandelier that looked a collection of tuba horns, which was pretty cool.
I don't think I can fairly judge the drinks as they were serving free vodka and Jack Daniels cocktails that were being made at lightning speed. They did the job, which was all we really cared about.
The food? Really shocking, but again, probably not fair to judge. They dished out a collection of really bland corn fritters, really salty overseasoned potato wedges, nicely crisp fries (but how can you get fries wrong?), pork ribs and chicken wings (I didn't try either of these, but I was told that they were okay).
Despite this, we had a cracking evening - the live band was great, we danced, we drank, we laughed. But based on the other reviews, I probably wouldn't come back here just to eat.
The Blues Kitchen
28/10/2009
I had been looking forward to this site opening ever since I heard Camden was going to get its very own blues bar. I gathered a couple of friends and we headed down for some 'Soul Food'. Now having visited America on numerous occasions I am certainly a fan of stick to your ribs cooking and I have to say Blues Kitchen didn't disappoint. My buffalo wings were a treat. My lips haven't tingled like that since my last visit to the states. The sauce was spot on. If only I could buy some to use at home. I followed with Barbeque Ribs which I have to say were huge. The ribs were pull apart tender and the BBQ sauce delicious. I didn't have room for a dessert but did help my self to a peanut butter milkshake which tasted just like a snickers which let me tell you is a very good thing. My friends enjoyed the Gumbo and the Jumbo Crab Cake. Both were huge and offered great value.
The waitresses are very smiley and friendly which for Camden is a rare treat and they looked after us from start to finish. Having seen the previous two reviews I think they have certainly improved very quickly.
The blues music in the background is also a winner. Timeless quality music which isn't reliant on the latest trends is certainly a much needed change on Camdens musical landscape.
This place cant fail. We'll be back next week. Better hit the gym in the meantime though to work off those ribs!
The Blues Kitchen
15/11/2009
I had a great time coz yelp is here but otherwise, Blues Kitchen, I am really sorry but you underperformed.
1) mint julep- why is not in a julep beaker? Also it was way not minty enough. And SO icy?
2) loosing our reservation. Oops.
3) ribs slathered in yummy sauce... that tasted like the steak sauce I get in IGA in canada. For $1.99. Where is the homemadeness?
4) Music too loud. Are you trying to be a bouncing bar or a restaurant?
5) Urm... you promised me live music and there wasn't.
I feel upset. I feel short changed for the amount I spent there. Lucky for you the company was BRILL. (but I am not feeling charitable so still only 2 stars.)
The Blues Kitchen
10/5/2010
alright. first of all im american. i absolutely LOVE cajun/creole/southern cookin'. and i absolutely HATE the bland taste of alot of british foods. there fore the blues kitchen is a true test to that. cause cajun is known for their bright colorful lively tastes & textures. while british food is well.. mm kinda the opposite. though i do love crumpets.
heres what we ordered:
Corn Bread: a bit dry. served with a mango-buffalo wing flavored sauce. wtf is up with that? its a side dish served with HONEY and butter. please dont destroy such a hearty tasty dish. the chef personally let me have a try at the cornbread in the kitchen and for some reason that was really really good moist slathered with butter, bits of corn etc.
RIBS: pretty good. tasted better, but ive been to the mississippi (see "the shed") and had the best in the country. but i will say its the best on the menu. falls off the bone, should slather more sauce on it. perhaps toss in a biscuit (as in bread not cookie) give options for sides? not just chips.
jambalaya: PLEASE REMAKE THIS. THIS NOT JAMBALAYA. it is a watery rice pilaf thing with vegetables and seafood. i couldnt finish it. even though its a £13 item and im a student.. i couldnt even bring myself to doggy bag it.
clam chowder: in san francisco, we are known for our clam chowder. ive been raised around this stuff so i know the ins and outs. first of all.. its soupy. okay guys its CHOWDER. add about more flour make it creamy add some potatoes LESS bacon. it tastes like bacon wheres the clam flavor?? also give the option for a bread bowl. thatll keep em coming.
we also ordered a burger and chicken wings... but i didnt get a try.
so to recap:
PLEASE do more research on cajun tastes & textures. if you want to have a restaurant that is more than a great up and coming music venue.. please please please do more research. perhaps get some americans to come in and tell you whats up..
as for me coming back, i probly will just to test out more food. cause im honestly curious.
janelle.
The Blues Kitchen
25/10/2009
1 Check-in Here
I was fired up about this place - spacious design, unique in its style, exciting 'Soul Food' menu and late night entertainment... Bam! This should be awesome. So after my early morning breakfast experience did I leave with my heightened levels of expectation met? Erm... sadly, no! This was Blues Kitchens second day of food service, and you could tell they weren't quite on their game yet. A few menu items were not available, which is surprising after just one day of serving food. My American Breakfast was missing the BBQ beans and although the rest of the offering was decent, it did not inspire me to whoop, rub any of it into my body or even sing my plate a little song. My four colleagues who were with me were equally disappointed. Now I don't want you to think the experience was bad, because it was not, we simply had high expectations, and they simply were not met. What I can and will praise was the sensational strawberry milkshake I had, whilst the sausages also deserve a mention for being oh so good. Can't beat a big sausage in the morning can you?
All in all, I will be back to Blues Kitchen to try the evening menu (I am a big fan of corn fries) and to dabble with the drinks and sway to the live music.
Come on guys, I know you can be great!
Listed in: NW1, The Places I Go Out, Free Wi Fi hotspots, Hearty Breakfasts, Camden High Street
The Blues Kitchen
18/11/2009
I really do feel this place is the "best blues & soul food" in London. I'm an American from the East Coast and I lived in NC for a little bit so I think I might know a little bit about BBQ. I think the wings and ribs are exponentially better than Bodeans. I will definitely come back here again!
