Preview: Giggling Squid

On Friday myself and fellow Bitten brethren, Lucy, headed to the opening of the newest chain to grace the city, Giggling Squid.

Started as a pop-up restaurant in Brighton in 2002, Giggling Squid is now well into it’s 30’s in terms of branches in the UK. For the uninitiated, the food is billed as Thai Tapas and marketed as ‘Staggeringly Good Thai Food’.

As well as ordering stand-alone small and large dishes there’s also what look like ultra good value tapas sets and dish meal combos for (all floating around the £8-£12 mark). We were rather looking forward to getting to grips with this as a concept and reporting back, but what we happened upon was definitely a boozy launch with some tasters, rather than a full-on menu assault.

Whilst Oli’s Thai, Chiang Mai and Thaikun needn’t be quaking in their boots we were pleasantly surprised with what they’d done with the old Loch Fyne site on Walton Street. A wise (and potentially brave) choice of location, they are one of the few chains branching out of the confines of the Westgate development. Zheng flourishes here so why not another offering from the Southeast Asian plate?

Inside, staff were polite, friendly and efficient. Lots of cosy upholstered booths in fresh florals offer intimacy between diners, the high ceiling lightens the space making it bright and airy.

Canapé-sized tasters from the menu included vegetable money bags, chicken satay, papaya and beef salad, rice crackers with duck, pork skewers with puffed rice and signature salt and pepper squid. All tasty fare for sure so we’re looking forward to coming back to sample fully and report back comprehensively soon.