Originally published on Tuesday, 10th November 2009

Not Cannelloni

Kanaloa brings a shot of Mahiki to the City

I’m not trying to be provocative just for the Hell of it. Really. But I just can’t help feeling that someone might be pulling my leg with all this recent “the City is cool” stuff.

It’s fine for New York’s Financial District to have the odd secret watering-hole. Tokyo: no problems there. But London? (Scoff.) The City is the realm of pink shirts and grey suits; not raucous grass-skirted, model-draped mid-week hangovers.

And yet, and yet, and yet… Proud Cabaret unveiled its skirt-ruffles just last week. And now the new arm of Mahiki is popping its rum volcano City-side.

Kanaloa – something to do with the god of the ocean, apparently, and not a large stuffed tube of pasta – has an EC4 postcode, celeb-ish affiliation care of Sarah (Girl’s Aloud) Harding, scalable business wellie from the Novus Leisure group (Tiger Tiger, etc.) and looks like it might just shake up a storm.

And with Whoreditch’s iconic watering-hole, JaguarShoes, apparently growing (should that be sobering?) up with its own not-Pizza-East delivery pizza place next week, who knows: in a year’s time, real jobs, pink shirts and grey suits might just be the new skinny jeans.

We shiver at the thought. And yet…

INFO
Kanaloa , 18 Lime Office Court, Hill House, Shoe Lane, EC4A 3BQ

by AC