Starting this week, Soho restaurant Manzi’s will be shucking up oysters for just £2 each, or £9 for half a dozen, every weekday between 5:30pm and 6:30pm.
You’ll be able to choose from a selection of lovely dressings to accompany your Rossmore Irish No.2 oysters, from chilli & soy to Bloody Mary. Alongside the oysters on the ‘Oyster Hour’ menu sits a bunch of drinks starting at just £5, including Champagne for a tenner, and cocktails such as The Atlantic with white port, kumquat liqueur, rosemary and mediterranean tonic, and the You Only Live Twice with gin, vodka, dry mastiha, aromatised wine and rock samphire.
Come for the cheap oysters and drinks, and stay for the rest of the menu, featuring delicious small plates such as devilled eggs, crayfish rolls, and tempura king prawns with a brown crab mayo. Or, of course, their bigger, more flamboyant dishes, like the Monkfish Wellington, designed to be shared, the Lobster Thermidor, or the catch of the day.
Manzi’s restaurant, which now occupies two floors of Bateman’s Buildings, follows closely in the footsteps of the much-loved original restaurant that sat within Leicester Square for more than half a century. The playful-yet-glamorous spot is well-known for its wacky interiors – with mermaids holding up the bar, a huge alabaster Poseidon peering over one of the tables, and a giant taxidermy marlin; a nod to Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea.
Many people compared the atmosphere of the original Manzi’s restaurant to that of Rick’s Café in the 1942 film Casablanca, and much of the current look is inspired by this fictional place, particularly the white rendered walls of the lobby.
Manzi’s Oyster Hour menu is available every Monday to Friday from 5:30pm to 6:30pm. Find it at 1-8 Bateman’s Buildings, W1D 3EN.