Totteridge Brasserie

What a strange experience eating here was, I just have to share it with the web:

This restaurant is situated on the shopping parade next to Totteridge & Whetstone tube so you would kind of expect it to be busy and lively at 1pm, full of diners enjoying lunch. Quite the opposite is true, you walk through the front door complete with peeling paint and graffiti marks directly into to a completely empty (I really mean empty, not even staff!) dining room that looks like your granny’s 1970’s lounge complete with York Stone bar area. You are (I use the word with tongue firmly in cheek) ‘greeted’ by a gentleman who despite the lack of any customers is clearly stressed and impatient and seemingly disappointed that someone has actually come into his establishment.

Not a great start and I probably should have made an excuse and left at this point. Trouble is, I suffer from the English politeness disease and couldn’t bring myself to do it. So, I sat and looked at the menu, finally ordered and waited for my food. Oh, I tried to order a glass of wine but apparently this is a ‘un-licensed’ restaurant. It would seem that the gentleman is the only staff member, there are no waiting staff and he does the cooking too. While waiting I am struck by the smell of cooking and I try to place the particular aroma. Finally it comes to me; the place smells exactly like the kitchen when I was at school. It smells of school dinners! My food arrives, a simple pasta dish which was cheap and adequate and I can’t complain too much about that. I did however ask the gentleman if I could plug-in my phone-charger for 10 minutes and he refused. In fact he told me that mobile phones were not allowed inside his establishment as it “disturbs the other customers”. Well, not only were there no other customers, there was no one at all. In the 50 minutes that I was there, nobody else came in and the phone didn’t even ring.

I paid the bill (you guessed it, he doesn’t take plastic) and left.

It was quite surreal, I urge anyone in the area to pop in, even if just for a coffee, you have to experience it to believe it.
Comment on this reader review

Jason Yuraku
Overall rating
Food 4 | Service 1 | Atmosphere 0 | Value for money 4
Saturday, January 05, 2008