All reader reviews by SGarvey

E&O

My fiancée and I went to E&O for dinner on a Sunday night. We both love our cocktails and wine so decided to go an hour early so we could try out the bar which seemed to get some great reviews. The bar area itself is very small and cramped which meant we had to stand with our drinks in our hands for a short while. Some staff were having food in the restaurant at the time, which was before it officially opened so we asked if we could have our drinks in the restaurant also. Unfortunately they said no but we managed to get a spot to sit down in the bar shortly afterwards. We had two cocktails each which were nice (5.5/10) but far too expensive for what they were. The quality of the cocktail certainly didn't represent the price, £7.50-£9. We ordered some fried chilli squid while we were having our drinks and waiting for the restaurant to open, (we were pretty hungry). The squid was very well cooked and tender.

Eventually the restaurant was opened, our coats taken, and we were escorted to our table. We ordered still water and a bottle of Argentinian Malbec. We ordered our food and went outside for a cigarette. After 4 minutes of being outside the waitress informed us that our food was on the table. (This is the first time I have seen a restaurant serve food to an empty table, so I certainly wasn't impressed with this). Luckily the starters were nice, particularly the warm duck salad and my mixed sashimi . Onto mains next, marinated beef steak for me and honey pork with coriander for my fiancée. Steak was good, pork was fair. I'm not a fan of coriander and this dish had coriander everywhere, in the salad and all over the pork. This amount was certainly not necessary.

I finished off with profiteroles and a double espresso which were good. The final bill came to £142,

VERDICT: Nice to try once but not good value for money. You can get much better cocktails for the same money elsewhere.

Tuesday, November 04, 2008
Overall rating
Food 7 | Service 3 | Atmosphere 4 | Value for money 3