‘Smiths’ Spitalfields Launch Party.

When an invitation landed in my inbox that promised ‘beats, bubbles, beef and beer’, I wasn’t going to turn it down. I hadn’t seen Edd since the Bacanal brunch, and we were in need of a catch up from our recent travels, so on Thursday I dragged him along to the re-launch of ‘Smiths’ restaurant in Spitalfields in Shoreditch. We don’t often venture that far East, it has to be a really good event to get me there as it’s a bit of a trek from where I live and work, but it was so worth it.
 
‘Smiths’ originated in Farringdon in Smithfield Market, and has now branched out to Spitalfields. It is huge with four floors dedicated to meat and drink. There’s a cocktail bar in the basement, two floors of restaurant space, and then at the very top there’s a room available for private hire. The party consisted of delicious canapes, which included salmon, squid, mini beef pies, and of course mini burgers. It was also free-flowing alcohol all night…which proved dangerous. Very dangerous.

We had a tour of the restaurant whilst sipping on a Havana Club Rum and Coke (it reminded me of being in Cuba and gave me major holiday blues!), and loved the private room at the top, it would literally be the perfect room for a large dinner party. You can see everything going on on the floor below, and it’s really light and airy with lovely big tables.

Downstairs the Chefs were preparing the food – it’s an open kitchen and you can see everything going on. I love restaurants with this setup!

We had a look at the menus and there was a wide variety of different options. I’m not a huge fan of steak, but luckily there were plenty of different meat and fish options aside from the standard steaks, and there were also quite a few veggie options! I think I may have to come back with a group of friends and test out the menu!

We then headed down to the basement to test the cocktails. There was quite a large list of various takes on cocktails, with two menus – one for the launch, and the house cocktails, and as they were free we naturally tried most of them (for review purposes, of course).

The cocktails were….interesting. One was a daiquiri, however it didn’t taste or look like one…in fact I’m not even sure which one it was! Around 8pm the pianist started playing, and we were instructed to write down any song requests on slips of paper, which were then placed on top of the piano. Over the next couple of hours the pianist got through all of the requests – we couldn’t believe how he knew all the words to all of the songs that were requested!

Edd went for The Beatles and Coldplay, while I went for Queen. We munched on mini beef pies and mini cheeseburgers whilst we listened, and then when people started dancing we got up and joined in. The pianist finally played my request of Bohemian Rhapsody, and we sang along word-for-word…obvs.

Before long all of the cocktails and rum & cokes we’d been drinking went to our heads. Lots of dancing and shape-throwing occurred from various attendees, and then when Proud Mary came on I naturally did the whole dance routine. We finally decided it was time to head home, and vowed to come back with more friends to experience ‘Smiths’ properly! Thanks Smiths for an awesome night!