This weekend we’ve invited our friends from White Rabbit on Bradbury Street to take over the kitchen at Birthdays.

The brief? We left all that stuff to them, so they’ve decided to create a menu inspired by their family favourites. Having wondered over to their place the other night to try some, I’m happy to say this was an incredibly good idea. 

They’re calling the menu – as you might imagine – their Family Favourites menu. Service will run from 6:00pm till 11pm on Friday April 26th and Saturday April 27th, with a short five item menu and a selection of sides.

Here’s what you can expect:

BURGER
Aged Chuck & Aged Fore Rib Beef Pattie, Glazed Brioche Bun, Butter Lettuce, Beef Tomato, American Cheese, Onion Ring, Family Favourites Burger Sauce, Shoe String Fries & Rosemary Salt.

SURF
Black Tiger Prawns, Iberico Ham, Chimichurri, Smoked Garlic Aioli, Shoe String Fries & Rosemary Salt.

FRIED CHICKEN
Buttermilk Marinated Free Range Chicken Thighs & Drumsticks, Maple & Walnut Slaw, Shoe String Fries & Rosemary Salt.

VEGGIE BURGER
Sweet Potato & Chickpea Pattie, Smoked Yoghurt, Ash, Honey, Pomegranate Pearls, Bulls Blood Leaves, Onion Ring, Shoe String Fries & Rosemary Salt.

RIBS
Smoked Dingly Dell Baby Back Ribs, BBQ Sauce, Boston Baked Beans, Walnut & Maple Slaw.

Sides include Boston Beans, Maple & Walnut Coleslaw, Shoe-String Fries, and Chilli Cheese Fries.

The Kernel India Pale Ale, Centennial 7.2%
Upfront hops, lingering bitternesses, warming alcohols, bodies of malt. Lengths and depths of flavour. Bottled alive, to give them time to grow.

Meantime London Pale Ale, 4.3%
Meantime London Pale Ale continues the tradition of combining lots of American Cascade and Centennial hops to give it a complex citrus aroma and buckets full of local Kentish Goldings to provide the bitterness that makes the style so refreshing. Together they conspire to assail the nose with a complex, heady mix of spearmint, grass and ‘hop sack’ aromas, fruity citrus flavours and a bitter finish that makes pale ale drinking a truly rewarding experience.

Hackney Hopster, 4.2%
The Hackney Hopster is a debonair young chap of a pacific pale ale. Dressed in New Zealand and US hops, the Hopster shows off flavours of grapefruit, lemon zest and gooseberry. With a dry and fresh finish, you may find yourself wanting to hang out with this beer more often.

London Fields, Love Not War, 4.2%
First brewed barricaded in the brewery during the London riots. This brooding red ale is an ode to all things peace and love. A true union of malt and hops, with silky texture and soft caramel flavours cuddling up to a rich pear and summer fruit character.

Racer 5 India Pale Ale, California USA, 7%
This hoppy American IPA is a full bodied beer brewed with American pale and crystal malts, and heavily hopped with Chinook, Cascade, Columbus and Centennial. There’s a trophy in every glass.

Doggy Style Classic Pale Ale, Maryland USA, 5.5%
Dry Hopped with a load of Cascade hops grown in the Pacific Northwest. Doggie Style has enough hop character to satisfy hop-heads, but isn’t overpoweringly hoppy. It’s brilliant amber-copper color and pleasant malt flavor comes from the addition of Carastan malts.

Liberty Ale, San Francisco USA, 5.9%
The champagne-like bubbles, distinctive hop bouquet, and balanced character of Liberty Ale revives centuries-old ale brewing traditions that are now more relevant than ever. First introduced in 1975, Liberty Ale is brewed strictly according to traditional brewing methods, and uses only natural ingredients — pale malted barley, fresh whole-cone Cascade hops and a special top-fermenting yeast, and water.

*Beers are subject to change.

After ten glorious months stuffing ourselves with fried chicken rolls and patty melts, it’s with a heavy heart (and belly!) that we announce our good buddies from Rita’s Bar & Dining are moving on to pursue the dream of opening their own restaurant.

Since opening last summer, Rita’s Bar and Dining have built a reputation for serving up some of the best bar food in London. From the early days they’ve received critical acclaim for their re-imagined bar food – which has taken influences from all over the world to create some of the tastiest comfort dishes we’ve ever tasted – and simple mixed drinks such as their Hibiscus Frozen Margaritas, which have become a mainstay of the Birthdays bar.

The Rita’s team will serve up their final patty melts at Birthdays on April 20th… We’re not able to say exactly where they’re moving to at this stage, but the locals amongst you shouldn’t fear, they’re not going too far.

Their final three weeks, starting April 1st, will see reduced opening times of Wednesday to Saturday 7:00pm-10:30pm, through which they’ll be serving a consolidated menu including all the favourites of the last ten months. We’re told there may be a few surprise come-backs too. As ever their amazing fried Chicken and Waffle based lunch menu will be available on Saturday and Sunday from 12-3:30pm.

If you haven’t gorged yourself on patty melts then now is the time. Follow Rita’s on Facebook and Twitter to get updates on menus and, for a limited time, reservations too.

We can’t tell you who’ll be setting up shop in the Birthdays kitchen following Rita’s departure just yet, but we can say this: we really do consider ourselves lucky to have such talented friends. Stay tuned for further announcements.

In the meantime, we’d like to wish our friends at Rita’s Bar & Dining best of luck with their next endeavour, the last ten months really have been a blast.

Birthdays xx

Fortunately around that same time a bunch of our friends started work on Rita’s Bar & Dining, which was essentially a collaboration between four people who had done a ton of other stuff that we really liked. So we went and spoke to them and drank some beer and figured it out and decided to offer them use of our kitchen. As far as we were concerned they could cook whatever they liked as long as a) it tasted good with beer and b) they’d agree to serve it late.

Personally I think they’ve done a pretty amazing job. My favourite dishes are the Fried Chicken Roll, the Patty Melt and the Ox Heart Taco. Seriously, ox heart in a taco. I had no idea ox heart would taste so fucking good. I should have known though, it’s the heart of an ox. Also, I’ve eaten about 30 and I’m now trying to claim a personal trainer as a tex deductible expense.

Yeah, I know, we all got a bit carried away with the meat stuff, they’re working on some more vegetarian options now. Sorry about that.

Rita’s also serves a range of cocktails too, courtesy of resident booze enthusiast Missy Flynn and before you even say it we’ll be expanding the beer options over the next couple of months as well.

For more info click here.

Pretty great huh. It was no big deal though; on a few occasions I over-heard people talking about how we’d obviously planned it like that, because of DIY aesthetics and everything. This provided me with a ready made answer for all kinds of difficult questions pointed in my direction, most of which came from my dad. It was an aesthetic thing I told him.

One great thing about being involved with a build project is you get to see tons of machinery, just look at this guy:

No shit, that thing is remote controlled and they drove it down the stairs on caterpillar tracks so it could dig a whole 2.5 inches into the ground and you guys would have a slightly better view of the stage. We also got to spend an afternoon doing this:

That was so the floor would stay glued down. This next picture was taken whilst we were building the live room down in the basement, I’d like to say that this is from about two weeks before we opened, although that could well be a lie. I think this was actually from about three days before we opened for Land of Kings festival. My nervous breakdown is just out of shot here:

Whenever we got stressed we’d just switch the lights on though.

Getting a massive bar installed and wondering just how many drinks I would order over it during the course the next few years was really something. Look how happy everyone is:

Thanks for your patience, and sorry about the dust.