Foliage

We went for a dinner on Friday evening and chose 4 courses out of 5 options. It is fun that one can have two/three starters and have the dessert while skipping the main. Personally I get bored of too much of the same piece of meat so this was perfect. In fact, the food was as good as a polished restaurant can get. It was delightful.

I have, however, some observations. The bar is right next to the restaurant. Perhaps this is a Friday evening thing but the noise - drunken people laughing and shouting started to become rather irritating later so if you are after a romantic dinner, perhaps avoid Friday until the restaurant builds a wall or move the bar further away.

I was rather scared as I walked down the stairs to the hotel bathroom as I had to pass by a drunkard holding on to the balustrade and looking very uncomfortable.
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Jo
Overall rating
Food 10 | Service 8 | Atmosphere 5 | Value for money 7
Sunday, December 09, 2007

Booked this restaurant for friend's 40's birthday.

Very attensive service - from the receptionist to the manager to the whole team. Very relax and not too formal.

Didn't find the decoration bland - when you have the fantastic view of Hyde Park I don't think that interior matters.

Food is really good. I had the tuna and my friends had ox tail soup. Both top quality. Desert is another highlight and I would recommend those exotic options (passion fruit, mango etc).

Would definitely go back!
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J Tung
Overall rating
Food 9 | Service 9 | Atmosphere 9 | Value for money 9
Thursday, November 29, 2007

My huband treated me to a meal at Foliage last night for my 30th birthday - and what a meal to remember. We had the special tasting menu from Norbert Niederkofler who was was a guest chef for this week only. I was happy to sit-out the pork course as i dont eat pork but the staff were really helpful and accomodating and invited me to substitute it with any other main course off the aa la carte menu.

The meal was absolutely delicious and the service faultless - we were made to feel so welcome and we really had a fantastic evening.
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Alex Cook
Overall rating
Food 10 | Service 10 | Atmosphere 7 | Value for money 10
Sunday, November 11, 2007

Yesterday I went to Foliage for lunch to sample the cooking of their guest chef, Norbert Niderkofler, from the well-regarded St. Hubertus restaurant in Italian South Tyrol. I had the Tasting menu and it was a very worthwhile experience.

The food has Austrian and Italian influences, with good and fresh flavours, and was very good value at £55. I had a glass of wine with each course, selected by the sommelier. All Italian, those produced by Jermann and Lageder were especially good. The sommelier obviously knows his "business" as it can't have been easy to find wines to accompany so well dishes such as a pine needle risotto or pasta parcels filled with Graukaese, a sharp mountain cheese from the region. The menu was autumnal in taste and "feel" and the experience was enhanced by a view of the trees in Hyde Park, an attractive picture of green, brown and gold.

Special mention for the service which was unfailingly professional and polite, yet friendly: a combination which some other restaurants of the same class can't seem to manage so successfully.

I would very happily return to sample the regular menu.
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JohnP
Overall rating
Food 9 | Service 10 | Atmosphere 8 | Value for money 9
Wednesday, November 07, 2007

went there for lunch on the strength of these reviews and have to say it was about the best meal i have ever had!

absolutely amazing food and i thought the service was brilliant. They could tell my girlfriend and i weren't used to this sort of experience so they were extra friendly to us and gave us complementary dishes and wine. The staff we were involved with weren't pretentious at all.

The decor isn't the best but the food and the value is out of this world.

The beef was like nothing i could have imagined.

I will definitely be going back here and i recommend everyone try this restaurant.
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foliagefan
Overall rating
Food 10 | Service 10 | Atmosphere 8 | Value for money 9
Monday, November 05, 2007

foliage was a fantastic venue for a recent aniversary celebration, having heard such good reviews I had high hopes, thankfully my hopes were well founded as I was instantly greeted by extremely friendly and profesional staff. The service thriugh out was of a similar high standard with a diverse menu fitting for anyones pallet. The venison that I tried for my main course was without doubt one of the finest main courses I have had the pleasure of tasting.Thank you to foliage we will hopefully be back in the near future
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Karl Nicolson
Overall rating
Food 10 | Service 9 | Atmosphere 9 | Value for money 10
Sunday, October 28, 2007

I had Saturday lunch here a couple of weeks ago and it was fantastic. The food was excellent, four courses - a flexible choice from them as well. The service was great. I would definitely recommend eating here . . . but the drinks are ridiculously over-priced. A bottle of water was £5 and a champagne cocktail was £12.50.
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A
Overall rating
Food 9 | Service 9 | Atmosphere 9 | Value for money 8
Wednesday, October 17, 2007

what can we say! words cannot describe what a great time we had at The Foliage. We felt like royalty ,the service was great we were totally cared for, i was 8 months pregnant and it was our first time in london.The food was outstanding, compliments to head chef chris staines,we will definately come again.
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mel and jason winfield
Overall rating
Food 10 | Service 10 | Atmosphere 10 | Value for money 10
Thursday, September 20, 2007

London is a funny place. It does things to you. For instance, if you happen to be a foreigner living here, you tend to develop a sort of automatic defensive mechanism against all those knucklehead countrymen of yours that will harp on about how unpleasant and expensive the food in London is on the basis of a single visit to Angus Steak House in Leicester Square as part of their 3-day organised group holiday. You unsuccessfully try to explain to them that they are knuckleheads and that they deserve to eat dreadful steaks until the end of time as a sort of Dantean retribution for their idiocy. The problem is that, sometimes, one can’t help but think that their inane comments are not that far from the truth. A recent string of disappointments, which included the once unassailable Pétrus, seriously questioned my conviction in London’s culinary scene.

Fortunately, my latest visit to Foliage has restored at least some of my fading faith. I have been to the Mandarin’s flagship restaurant several times in the past four years and have always found it very decent indeed but not a patch on the likes of Pétrus, The Square, Claridge’s and so on. However, if my latest outing is anything to go by, then Chef Staines’ level of cooking has improved dramatically over the last couple of years, so much so that, one might say, it can now challenge pretty much all of the 2-starred establishments.

Mind you, this doesn’t mean that the experience was faultless. When booking, you need to hand-over credit card details and swallow the threat of losing 50 quid a head if you don’t show up or cancel less than 24 hours in advance (it’s reduced to £25 for weeknights). This practice, introduced in London by Ramsay, is petty and does nothing but cast a cheap light over the city’s finest eating establishments. Secondly, in order to reach the restaurant, you have to walk through the Mandarin Bar and thus be exposed, albeit briefly, to its flashy Eurotrash/Arab clientele. Thirdly, although the dining room still looks fine, the carpet and the chairs are beginning to show their age.

This is as far as my critique will go because every other aspect of the meal was pretty much impeccable. The menu has been simplified to include only a handful of very appetising, summery dishes - certainly a case of more is less - accompanied by a tasting menu and a surprise menu. I would have gone for the tasting menu, which did seem appealing (despite being essentially identical to every other tasting menu in the capital: Fois Gras, Scallops, Sea Bass, Beef etc.), but, after the aforementioned disappointments, I chose, perhaps mistakenly, to steer clear. I therefore ordered a superb Tuna Rossini with grapefruit, followed by a very well conceived dish of Sea Bass with Blood Orange and Red Pepper, and a perhaps less successful but nonetheless interesting combination of Pigeon, beetroot and cherries. For puds, I had something chocolaty with pineapple, which was very good indeed. My date picked a completely different selection of dishes but if I were to recount what she had as well, I would probably lose the will to live. All I’ll say is that she thought that everything was excellent, which, in all likelihood, it was.

Considering the level of cooking and the location, £55 for four courses seems like a bargain, especially if compared with similar establishments. Also of note is a wine list which is very reasonably priced with an ample selection of good bottles for less than £50 – a precious rarity in London and something that all other high-end restaurateurs should learn from. I sincerely hope that both of these connotations remain unchanged in the future.

Two final comments: first, I’m very pleased to see that their policy of replacing napkins every time a punter went to the loo has been ditched and second, it is nice to be greeted with “Welcome back, sir”, even if I had not been for about two years and had always ordered conservatively from the wine list. This sort of small insignificant things does tend to make a difference in the end.

All in all, a superb meal.

Dinner for two with water, honestly priced plonk and service: £180.
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F.L.
Overall rating
Food 10 | Service 9 | Atmosphere 8 | Value for money 10
Saturday, June 23, 2007

Excellent - sunday lunch

The food was interesting and varied.

The drinks were overpriced.

The service was top notch.

The ambiance was relaxed but elegant.

(Thank god no one decided to light up, but hey, come 1st july, we're all spared)
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Adrian
Overall rating
Food 10 | Service 9 | Atmosphere 8 | Value for money 10
Sunday, June 17, 2007