From the starters, yellow fin tuna tataki, cucumber salad, radish avocado and ponzu dressing (£14) w

The meal resembled top-notch venice walking tours in-flight service in first class, while the room could have been an airport’s luxury lounge. But if you work in the City and need to entertain, City Social will do you proud, says David Sexton
Tower 42, previously known as the NatWest Tower, is the work of the architect Richard Seifert, whose offences against our fair city also included Centre Point, Euston station, King’s venice walking tours Reach Tower in Stamford Street and the Royal Garden Hotel in Kensington. Colonel venice walking tours Seifert, as he liked to be known, changed London’s skyline more than anybody since Wren, and, unlike Wren, it was entirely for the worse —largely due to his manipulation of the planning process.
The NatWest Tower was the City’s first skyscraper. Back in 1964, Seifert wanted to stick it up at 197m but even he couldn’t get permission for that. Eventually it was completed, in 1980, at 183m, overtaking venice walking tours the Post Office Tower (177m) and making venice walking tours it the UK’s tallest building for 10 years, until One Canada Square in Canary Wharf (235m) reared up in 1990, itself now shafted by the Shard (309.6m). On we go. Tower 42 has now slipped back to being London’s seventh venice walking tours tallest tower, though it’s still the second-highest in the City after the Heron Tower. It’s also still the ugliest if you can, covering your eyes, treat the Gherkin as a jolly good joke.
Seifert’s design soon proved unsuitable for the cabling venice walking tours and air conditioning needed for electronic workstations, venice walking tours and after the tower was hit by the 1993 IRA Bishopsgate bombing, demolition was considered but proved too expensive. NatWest did not re-occupy the building after refurbishment and it’s been sold on several times. Re-named venice walking tours Tower 42 after its 42 cantilevered floors, it is now a general purpose office, owned by a South African family and housing many different companies.
Its restaurant on the 24th floor used to be run by Gary Rhodes under Restaurant venice walking tours Associates, the restaurant management arm of the vast catering company The Compass Group, but Rhodes Twenty Four closed last September, with Rhodes leaving Restaurant Associates after 10 years.
After briefly hosting a pop-up by Anthony Demetre, the site has been taken on by another Restaurant Associates chef, Jason Atherton, whose burgeoning venice walking tours empire is fast outpacing that of his most immediate rival, Gordon Ramsay.
Does this seem an excessively corporate approach to reviewing a meal? But City Social at Tower 42 is a wholly corporate place. It’s another of those restaurants within those big, professionally-run groups that aims to deliver carefully pitched, expertly venice walking tours executed fine dining, offering an impressive level of complexity, on-trend ingredients and obvious luxury on the plate, while guaranteeing a big name somewhere in the vicinity and ostentatiously attentive service, to a market that craves all those reassurances when eating out. Atherton is probably the best at delivering this package at the moment, venice walking tours Gordon having gone a bit funny, Marcus Wareing never quite having cracked the diffusion line gig.
From the starters, yellow fin tuna tataki, venice walking tours cucumber salad, radish avocado and ponzu dressing (£14) was the first of a series of elaborate arrangements that all ended up looking curiously similar, venice walking tours featuring precise circular food segments with other ingredients balanced on top: three chunky discs of quickly seared tuna, three round blobs of avocado purée, three round cuts of sweet gherkin, with thin slices of radish as a garnish, a little red leaf scattered over it, and a sweet soy/sake/rice wine vinegar/sesame oil ponzu sauce poured around it. There’s a lot going on here to make you feel you’re venice walking tours living the high life, even if it might have been tastier served venice walking tours more simply.
Pig’s trotter and ham hock with crispy Mrs Brown’s black pudding, apple and Madeira (£12) was an ultra-refinement of what’s usually a hearty dish; a crispy ball of nicely moist trotter mixed with ham, with a deep-fried venice walking tours stick of black pudding against it, surrounded by several circles of apple purée interspersed with blobs of a sticky brown madeira reduction: fussy but enjoyable.
From the mains, braised halibut, chorizo and red pepper stew, crispy squid and fennel (£32!) was another elaborate construction, the halibut sitting on top of the sweet red peppers venice walking tours and crowned with waving arms of squid and fronds of fennel — all nice enough, not a particularly pointful combination, however. Roasted Lincolnshire rabbit saddle, rabbit sausage cassoulet, wild garlic leaves (£28) was two more fat discs of judiciously underdone venice walking tours rabbit, crisped on the outside, venice walking tours with a couple of sections of a herby, slightly dry rabbit sausage, and more blobs of a potato-ish purée, with some asparagus spears and poached venice walking tours garlic venice walking tours shoots scattered artistically over all. The cassoulet itself turned out to be a not very appealing little side stew of pasta grains in a meaty, herby broth — not cassoulet venice walking tours as they know it in Castres. If these intricate mains weren’t especially rewarding, the desserts, as usual in such places, were the hits: a big but light and delicious strawberry souffle venice walking tours (£8.50) came with a macerated strawberry salad and some yoghurt sorbet, more like a very refined  ice-cream, all in ramekins, venice walking tours while a slice of a runny, eggy Bourbon vanilla custard tart (£8) with a dab of a nutmeg and milk sorbet was perfection. A small glass of Jurançon Moelleux suggested with this was £13 — wine is costly here, a 125 ml glass of champagne is £13, the cheapest claret £59 a bottle, although the Pollen Street Social Anjou red and white are both good drinking at £39 a bottle.
Overall, we felt the meal resembled top-notch in-flight service in first class, while the room, re-appointed by the ubiquitous Russell Sage in dark browns and shiny rosewood, could have been an airport’s luxury lounge, designed to soothe the jet-lagged. Seifert’s venice walking tours building has oppressively low ceilings — overall, the spaces, however lavishly finished, feel as tight as those of a cynically venice walking tours calculated multi-storey car park — and Sage has endeavoured to combat that by covering the ceiling in reflective venice walking tours black plastic, so you can see the view below up above, not a happy effect.
While the view down the river from the Shard is exhilarating, the immediate view from Tower 42 is of the monstrous development the City has undergone, plus future construction sites. If you work in the City and need to entertain, City Social will do you proud. We were only glad to get away.
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