All reader reviews by Anonymous

Quince

It was my 36th Wedding Anniversary on the 20th June my wife decided to treat me to a weekend of heaven in the Mayfair hotel. Why the Mayfair? Well apart from its great reputation it was the home of Silvena Rowe’s new restaurant Quince, we love Silvena and we love Turkish food mainly because my father Hussain was Turkish. On arrival at Heathrow my wife had an accident and broke a rib and suffered concussion. Our plan was to arrive in London early Friday 17th and go shopping but because of the accident we booked into our room and decided to stay in the Hotel for Lunch so we opened the door of Quince and found the decor to be truly spectacular and was greeted by a lovely young lady (your Restaurant Manager) and shown to a table, the service was amazing we ordered champagne and looked over the menu and was guided by our server who explained the menu in detail and gave personal recommendations, we had borek cigars, avocado hummus, squid and king prawns then had desert of lemon tart and rhubarb brulee.

This was a wonderful experience. We decided to buy Silvena’s books as I am a Chef and wanted to try out the recipes, at this time Silvena appeared at our table and signed the books for us, she had been busy talking to all the guest throughout our visit, we found this to be fantastic that she found the time to talk to everyone as this is the best way to get feedback fresh from the guests. We explained to Silvena that we had not intended to be there for lunch as we had booked Saturday night for our Anniversary treat, Silvena said that she was appearing on Saturday kitchen and was not intending to be there on Saturday night how lucky were we to see her on Friday lunch.

We then had a small walk around the streets close to Mayfair then retired to our room as my wife was now feeling worse from the effects of the accident, we ordered room service food for dinner and this was also beyond expectations. On Saturday after a great breakfast we did the tourist things, Harrods etc. In the evening we got dressed in our best bib and tucker and made our way to Quince we were again seated by you restaurant manager, had champagne and to our great surprise Silvena came up to our table and sat down beside us, as she had made a special effort to come and see us on our special night, she enquired of my wife’s health and complemented her by saying she looked lovely, we spoke about Saturday Kitchen and how Quince was booming because of this, Silvena then left to go home we proceeded to order borek bites, duck in fois gras and ottoman spiced lamb cutlets then sides of rice pilaf, lettuce heart salad, pomegranate salad followed by pork in blueberry molasses and lamb and beef skewers an absolutely wonderful experience, we had to have bitter orange baklava, I have had baklava all over the world and never has any come close to this and made even sweeter by the server announcing that Silvena had paid for the dessert, wow. We have since met up with Silvena at Taste of Edinburgh and were blown away with her friendliness and were granted front row seats to watch her demonstration at the AEG stand where we were asked by the AEG presenter to share our experience of Quince with the audience, which we did from our Hearts.

We would like to thank everybody at the Mayfair and Quince for making our Anniversary truly memorable.

Sunday, July 03, 2011
Overall rating
Food 10 | Service 10 | Atmosphere 10 | Value for money 10