Boisdale of Belgravia

I can't understand why there are so many negative reviews here. I ate here recently and had a perfectly lovely meal. Good food, good wine, and good service.

The decor was a little odd, granted, but I think that's a pretty minor concern compared with the food, wine, and service.

I don't think it was hideously overpriced. We paid about £500 for a 3-course dinner for 6, including a bottle of Champagne, a bottle of white wine, and 2 bottles of red wine. Hardly extortionate, especially by central London standards. That was with most of us going a la carte, as well. If you choose from the set menu, dinner would be considerably cheaper.

One surprising feature of the restaurant was the cigar terrace. It's partly outside, but I suspect not sufficiently outside that it's actually legal. Still, it's well away from the restaurant, so it's not a problem unless you choose to walk into it.
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NautiusMaximus
8 Overall rating
Food 9 | Service 9 | Atmosphere 5 | Value for money 9
Tuesday, November 24, 2009

The food was excellent. We had the MacSween haggis to start and the Boisdale burger (cooked medium as I asked) for main course and both were delicious and presented very nicely. The Bloody Mary sauce was very tasty. The price of the food was very reasonable and we felt that we got good value for money.

The ambience was a little stuffy for my tastes I would have liked it to be a little more relaxed. I think this is the type of restaurant that doesn’t see many Scottish people through its door. In fact when I called to book a table I had to spell my name 4 times, despite the fact that a) it is an easy Scottish/Irish name, b) it was an English person on the phone who should have known how to spell the name and when he read it back to me he pronounced it completely incorrectly. I could have forgiven someone who was French or something but coming from someone who was English was ridiculous.

I was soooo disappointed that they didn’t sell any Scottish beer or larger and the waiter didn’t even know what Irn Bru is, never mind have any! Hardly Scottish!

The table service was OK, but when they were not at the table the service staff spent far too much time standing around chatting amongst themselves which would explain why they didn’t know our table number, and if I want to see a waiter juggling a tray whilst walking between tables and customers, I would have gone to the circus.
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Sharon McGuire - View all reviews by this user
7 Overall rating
Food 9 | Service 5 | Atmosphere 4 | Value for money 8
Sunday, July 19, 2009