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Reader rating
Description: With its "wildly OTT" interior and its 800 seats, this "trendy" Camden Town yearling is certainly "unique"; even those who find the pan-Asian grazing dishes "delicious" though, can feel it's "too expensive", and critics say this is a "tacky" sort of place, with "appalling" service.
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Service: 
Ambience:
Phone: 020 7482 5757
Website: http://www.gilgameshbar.com
Open: Restaurant: Monday - Sunday: 12:00 - 15:00 and 18:00 - 24:00 Babylon Lounge and Bars: Monday - Thursday: 18:00 - 02:30 Friday - Saturday: 12:00 - 02:30 Sunda: 12:00 - 01:30
Dress code: Smart casual - no trainers or caps
Good for: Good food, Ambience.
Payment options: All major cards accepted
John Prescott can stop worrying about the Millennium Dome. It seems that the plans of his friend, Philip Anschutz, to turn it into a super casino have been shelved. I can exclusively reveal that the Dome has been dismantled and then reassembled, brick by brick, in Camden Town. In what must rank as the most unlikely rebranding exercise of the 21st century, it has been renamed Gilgamesh and turned into a pan-Asian restaurant.
At least, that's the only explanation I can think of for how this behemoth came to be built. Arranged over three floors, and with four separate dining areas, it is by some measure the largest restaurant in London. It only has room for 550 covers at present, but when it's fully operational it will be able to feed over 1,000. That's in addition to the Oriental Tea House and the Merchandising Shop. It's not so much an airport lounge as an airport terminal. I'm not exaggerating when I say you could land a helicopter in this place - something that may technically be possible since Gilgamesh has a retractable glass roof.
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To enter it, you have to ascend an escalator that, due to some architectural sleight of hand, is located in one of the busiest sections of Camden Market. How is this possible? One minute you're fending off a man with a pierced eyeball trying to sell you a copy of The Big Issue, the next you're in one of those giant spaceships that hovered menacingly on the horizon in Independence Day. The interior of Gilgamesh confirms the impression that you're in the presence of an alien intelligence. Everywhere you look, there are woodcarvings of epic battle scenes, depicting strange, mythological creatures trying to kill each other in a frenzy of bloodlust.
According to the manager, it took 10,000 Indians over four years to create these friezes, though once you take into account the number of square miles they cover that has to be some kind of record. Compared to decorating Gilgamesh, building one of the Great Pyramids must have been a walk in the park.
It's hard to imagine who would want to eat here, given that the kitchen has to churn out food faster than your average McDonald's. Fortunately, though, I don't have to imagine it, as the place is busier than Oxford Street on Christmas Eve. Has some kind of natural disaster occurred in Hampstead Garden Suburb? If so, is that why an entire postcode has relocated to this North London football stadium? Mind you, I'm just talking about the staff. They stand there, directing human traffic, like beleaguered police officers at an anti-war demo.
Incredibly, the food is actually quite good. The head chef is Ian Pengelley, an early adopter of pan-Asian cuisine who made his name at E&O, Will Ricker's high-visibility restaurant in Notting Hill. My wife and I start with a small dustbin lid full of edamame, followed by a mixed sashimi platter for me and a vegetarian daikon roll for her, and then, when we're more or less full, proceed to work our way through the rest of the menu. The highlight for me is the beef bolgigi, a Korean barbecue dish, whereas my wife is so smitten by the aubergine, sweet potato and tofu curry she asks for a doggy bag so she can take the rest of it home. It all has the whiff of food that has been mass-produced by an army of Chinese refugees toiling away in some underground city but, given the sheer scale of the operation, it is pretty impressive.
Is Gilgamesh the future of London dining? Assuming that the capital's chronic transportation problems are only going to get worse, it makes a weird sort of sense. Instead of starting your evening in a local bar, proceeding to a West End restaurant and, eventually, making your way to a club in Shoreditch, by which time you'll have spent 75 per cent of your evening in transit, why not stay in one place? Gilgamesh is a city-within-acity that's considerably easier to navigate than the real thing. My only suggestion for improvement would be the introduction of a high-speed monorail to help the customers get around.
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
