Quaglino's

I went to Quaglino's as part of a group of six last week. After reading the reviews on this site I was a little apprehensive, but we had a great night.

We were going to be a bit late for our table, so we phoned ahead and they said it was no problem. On arrival we were shown directly to our table. It was a Thursday night and about half full - over the course of the night it filled up completely, but it didn't feel claustrophobic as other reviewers have suggested. The waiters were pleasant and attentive, but not intrusive. All our dishes arrived together, were well cooked and tasted wonderful.

Two courses, with wine, water and side dishes came to about £45 per person. Overall, a really nice evening, and I'd recommend the restaurant.
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Kate
Overall rating
Food 8 | Service 8 | Atmosphere 8 | Value for money 8
Wednesday, May 14, 2008

How utterly dissappointing. I've been to Quaglinos a number of times before, however not for a year or so. The bellinis are now served in flutes that hold about 1/3 less than a standard champagne flute - no peach pulp, i'm guessing replaced by 50% peach juice from a carlton, you could barely taste the champagne, I would compare it to cordial. The same applies to the other 'flavours' - a complete rip off at £10.50 each.

Moving down to the restaurant, as the other reviewers correctly point out, I was surprised at how empty it was. My lobster salad was a joke - maybe scraping the barrel as a starter, but as a main course, words fail me - two pieces of lobster placed on small hard chunks of potato in a completey tasteless avocado paste, not forgetting a couple of leaves of gem lettuce. My friend ordered the duck which she said was tasty - but quite frankly the worst presented dish I have seen in a while - school dinners Jamie style beat this hands down.

Quaglinos could be the perfect venue. The high ceilings, staircase and art deco homage remain alluring and the bar is welcoming and intimate. However the food and drink are well below the standard I would expect from a Conran restaurant hence overpriced leaving a bitter taste.
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Fay Bradley
Overall rating
Food 2 | Service 7 | Atmosphere 4 | Value for money 3
Sunday, May 04, 2008

All too often a restaurant falls foul of "living off it's name" and unfortunately, Quaglino's is no exception. Once it was a place you could go to knowing that the food would be good, service polite and efficient and even if it wasn't all that inspiring it would be a decent 7 out of 10....

As you walk into the cavenous emptiness, alarm bells should start ringing as to why at 9pm on a Friday evening it is so empty and that our party of 17 were able to get a table so easily in the heart of London on a Friday evening!

The bar was soulless and the wine list, well if you can call 2 wines a "list", was limited! Once seated it took 40 minutes for anyone to take our wine order and then a further 40 to tell us the wine we'd chosen (and our second choice) was not in stock.... The Chateaubriand was tough and overdone and most of the food was poorly cooked and presented. The service was extremely slow and the only saving grace was that they took the chateaubriand off the bill....

The experience would convince me not to return to Quaglinos for a very long time!
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Alex Green
Overall rating
Food 1 | Service 1 | Atmosphere 1 | Value for money 1
Tuesday, April 29, 2008

We went to Quaglino's last night (Sunday 20th April) for the London Restaurant Week offer of 3 course for £25 a head. We got to the restaurant early and had some cocktails in the bar. They were good but expensive. We then went to our table and were told that on the 3 courses for £25 menu only the vegetarian option was available. The duck and the fish dish were not available but they'd replaced that with sausages and mash or fish stew. We were slighty irritated as it didn't seem like a fair match/replacement option but ordered 2 of the fish stew, 1 vegetarian pasta and 1 sausages and mash. We had to ask twice for the wine list. The starters (carpaccio beef) were OK, very small but acceptable. The mains were terrible. The sausages were the cheapest sausages you could buy with hardly any meat content. The fish stew was absolutely awful. The broth tasted of nothing, just boiled water, no vegetable or fish flavours whatsoever. The chunks of fish were also tasteless. We really couldn't believe that they were serving such bad food. We decided we couldn't eat the mains and that we would rather leave. We asked to speak to the Manager(Thomas) who apologised but didn't seem surprised that we were complaining. From looking at the recent reviews on here today I can see why. He must have had many complaints recently. We also noticed that once we'd complained he went to speak to the waiting staff to sort the bill and to relay the problem, they obviously found it funny as we saw them laughing and looking over at our table! Shocking. We refused to pay for the food but settled our£130 drinks(2 x bottles of wine and the cocktails) bill before we left. We had to wait 20 mins for this bill and went and collected our coats before the bill was brought to us. It wasn't busy, quiet really yet the service was slow and the staff had an air of not being bothered. We were so disappointed ,as like many others we'd decided on Quaglino's over many other superb restaurants because of a recommendation from people who went a few years ago. It's obviously gone down hill since then and just cannot keep up with the other fantastic offerings in Mayfair.
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Sarah
Overall rating
Food 2 | Service 2 | Atmosphere 3 | Value for money 2
Monday, April 21, 2008

This was by far and away the worst meal and eating experience I have ever endured.

In retrospect I should have suspected the meal was going to be awful when we arrived to see the place almost entirely deserted.

It took 20 minutes for us to finally be given a wine menu by the unpleasant and unintersted waitress who then seemed surprised that we actually wanted to order some wine. The Carpaccio beef starter was passable at best but I could not believe the state of the main course of Fish Stew. It consisted of 4 lumps of unrecognisable, tasteless fish and 2 boiled potatoes floating in a bowl of orange coloured water. I have honestly never been served with a worse dish.

The rest of my tables dishes were equally awful and not one of us could bring ourselves to eat the meal which is a first as far as I am concerned. When we explained the situation to the manager he weakly apologised for the watery stew and then promptly returned to the waiting station where he stood there openly laughing at us. Truly awful.
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Neil
Overall rating
Food 0 | Service 0 | Atmosphere 0 | Value for money 0
Monday, April 21, 2008

I recently took the opportunity to try Quaglino's as part of London Restaurant Week and I must say it was a complete disappointment.

My main of carpaccio of beef was wonderful, but that's about where it ended. The duck was passable, the side dishes mixed up and my chocolate fondant was completely overcooked. All in all the food was below average for a local diner.

The service was, for a five star restaurant, way below standard. Water spilt on table, re-ordering drinks difficult and the wine waiter refilling half empty glasses with newly-ordered wine.

This is a place trading on reputation. And you can't do that for very long.
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Overall rating
Food 6 | Service 6 | Atmosphere 5 | Value for money 6
Wednesday, April 16, 2008

I understand that when dining on a set menu the food may not be the most exciting dishes the kitchen can offer. However, such food should be representative of the quality of the kitchen; after all, the popularity of set menus mean that many diners will judge restaurants on what they get from meal deals.

If that is true, I can only assume that the cuisine of Quaglino's - which previously had a very good reputation - has declined woefully. My first course of black pudding, chorizo, bacon and poached egg salad was far, far too salty. The egg was absolutely necessary to make it even edible.This was served on a paltry, tasteless, dried-out bit of lettuce.

This was followed by herb-crusted halibut on a bed of spinach. The herbs were bitter, and overpowered the bland fish - which was already weakened by its watery spinach base. The simple butter dressing with it was ineffectual - I gave up on this dish two-thirds of the way through.

My husband was uninspired by his carrot and ginger soup starter, leaving about half of it. Things improved a bit with his main course of a potato and chive pancake with (another) poached egg. This was also served with spinach and a butter dressing - I expect that these ingredients are particularly cheap and therefore seen as appropriate for the set menu.

We both had a pancake with chocolate sauce for pudding, which was the best course of all - a surprise to both of us, given that neither of us are pudding people, preferring the savoury options. At least we both finished that course!

I had wanted to dine at Quaglino's for a long time, but was sorely disappointed. We were offered no side plates nor butter knives with our bread before our first course - yes, it may be the French way, but it feels impolite to me to mess crumbs all over the dining table. Also, the residual butter on my knife didn't improve my awful salad starter in any way!

The venue is large and impressive - and packed with tables - with a magnificent staircase and high ceilings. Quaglino's was virtually empty when we dined early on a Sunday evening, which was something of a mercy - I imagine the acoustics would be awful when the place is full.

Service is generally good - although this was no stretch, given the lack of other diners. We found those who waited on our table to be pleasant and attentive, regularly refilling our glasses with a decent white Rioja (although not too often, as that would be irritating). Alas, we had to wait for a few minutes at the cloakroom while the relevant member of staff was in the back room - that made the service seem a little less polished.

A great shame - there seems little point in returning to Quaglino's.
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dawnage - View all reviews by this user
Overall rating
Food 3 | Service 7 | Atmosphere 5 | Value for money 7
Wednesday, April 02, 2008

A faultless Saturday lunch combined with an excellent value offer of two tickets to the Russian Exhibition at the RA.

Food standard was high and the floor manager seemed to have eyes in the back of his head.

In view of the previous reviews I can only assume that all the staff were replced overnight!
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MartinC - View all reviews by this user
Overall rating
Food 10 | Service 10 | Atmosphere 10 | Value for money 10
Tuesday, April 01, 2008

I too recently dined at Quaglino's, if that is what you can call dining. The menu was uninspired, but I thought to give it a chance, as 'classics' such as Lobster Thermidor or rib eye steak done well can still be a treat. Unfortunately nothing was done well - perhaps they misunderstood as a steak, ordered rare, was served well done. The lobster was dry and tasteless. Perhaps they thought "why bother" as the lobster was drowned in copious amounts of lumpy overly cheesy sauce. Presentation was woeful.

The wait staff were fawning....until a complaint was aired and then they treated us like children on their first trip to a "fancy" restaurant. In hindsight I am truly amazed that this restaurant remains open - and indeed it was fairly crowded the Thursday night we went. It obviously is surviving on its old (good) reputation, its location, and hoping for diners with more money than taste (and from what I saw last week there were plenty of those around).
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Overall rating
Food 0 | Service 0 | Atmosphere 2 | Value for money 1
Friday, March 14, 2008

Quaglino's -- what a disappointment. There was absolutely nothing I liked about the food or the drinks. We were a party of eight people. Drinks we had in the bar were either mixed improperly or they got the order wrong. Next, they could only offer us a table for eight which was so big and round that it was impossible to have conversation apart from the people sitting on your immediate right or left. The food was derisory - a goat's cheese tart that looked like it had just been carted in from Marks and Spencer; a rib-eyed steak which was fatty and over-cooked (I had order medium rare - the waiter tried to describe for me what was medium rare - as if I had never eaten a steak before - I would decribe I the steak I received as well done). I then asked the waiter if they had any fresh berries for dessert - I did stress the word fresh and said I was not bothered if they didn't have them. Well the waiter came to me a few minutes later and said they did - thus I ordered. Once again, seems as if someone sprinted to the nearest Marks and Spencer frozen food department and grabbed the berries. As if no one can tell the difference between fresh berries and frozen. Never again - there are too many good eating places in London to waste my time and money in a place like Quaglino's. Never again.
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Overall rating
Food 1 | Service 1 | Atmosphere 1 | Value for money 0
Friday, March 07, 2008