Caffe Uno

I just want to thank all the Caffeuno staff in High Street Kensington...I had a very nice dinner yesterday with my friends...The manager was extremely nice...he managed to find a table for us even if the restaurant was extremely busy...We enjoyed the food and the lovely athmosphere...they really make us feeling at home...We also had very good advise about food and wine and I'll suggest this restaurant to all my friends!
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monica mormone
Overall rating
Food 9 | Service 10 | Atmosphere 10 | Value for money 9
Sunday, June 25, 2006

You would imagine that a restaurant right next to the Coliseum, home to the English National Opera, might welcome opera-goers looking for a meal at the end of a show. To judge by our experience, however, that doesn’t seem to be the case, though if they’re quite as reluctant as they appear to be to have anyone come in at that time they should simply close their doors rather than have people come in and treat them appallingly. Having come out of Nixon in China we spent quite a while standing in the doorway before being met by the manager who without even greeting us said, “You can only have one course, hey,” as he ushered us brusquely to a table. We ordered two glasses of Montepulciano which when they arrrived were almost hot to the touch and tasted mostly like left-over mulled wine, which was a shame as I think it would have been a very drinkable wine had it been served at something a little closer to room temperature. A waiter had taken our order for a basket of ciabatta with olive oil and when this hadn’t arrived after quite some time we asked the manager if it would come before our meal otherwise there wouldn’t be much point in our getting it. He said that everything would come together, there were no starters after 11.30 and, when told that the wine was hot, asked if we’d wanted white wine and then excused its temperature by saying that it was summer. When the food arrived – as promised, all at the same time – the manager made an unpleasant show of asking us if we wanted the bread and then whisking it away. He reappeared, aggressively offering black pepper and parmesan, before flouncing off again. To be fair the pizza that I had was good and the pasta that my partner had, while nothing special, was perfectly fine so we have no real complaint about the food – even the ciabatta looked good, though it would have looked even better had it arrived when we’d hoped it might. We were then offered dessert – oddly, as we’d been told, repeatedly and unpleasantly, that we could have only one course. The manager also reappeared to thrust two glasses of what was presumably some kind of dessert wine onto the table as a gesture of appeasement before withdrawing again; it would have been a very welcome gesture had it been managed with something approaching good grace. As it was we experienced it as just one more instance of bewildering rudeness. Much clattering around then ensued with the two waiters noisily clearing tables near us and wiping them down. What really made our meal such an unpleasant experience was the attitude of the manager, from his unwelcoming first appearance to his subsequent rude and aggressive behaviour. If Caffé Uno doesn’t want to serve late-night customers, that’s absolutely fair enough, but in that case they should simply close their doors or turn people away. I don’t understand the point of inviting people in and then treating them as shoddily and rudely as we were treated.
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Overall rating
Food 7 | Service 0 | Atmosphere 0 | Value for money 3
Thursday, June 15, 2006