I met my lovely wife after work last week and we thought that we would try a meal out in Farringdon. She uses Zetter a fair bit for business lunches so we thought we would give it a go. The restaurant was fully booked though half empty at 7PM so the helpful front of house were able to find us a table for two. I thought the combined bar and dining room room worked well here. The bar patrons and diners kept seperate but still both adding to a nice buzz.
We weren't massively hungry so just had a main each. However we were bought plenty of excellent bread with olive oil to munch on whilst we waited. I went for a roast duck on bed of lentils with wild mushrooms whilst my wife had a wild mushroom parapadelle. She wasn't massively impressed with the pasta, I tried it and it was very heavy on the garlic. My duck was good though it was slightly over, the lentils and mushrooms worked well though. I ordered a gratin as a side which was really poor, dry, pretty tasteless. I was surprised as the open kitchen looked buzzing with a reasonable sized team working away. However I think they were possibly distracted by a large party they had to cater for in the function room downstairs which is a risk when going to a hotel restaurant.
The high point of the meal was definitely the service which was genuinely friendly and acts like bringing us more bread without us asking were nice to see. However the food itself left us a bit non plussed, my wife tells me their breakfasts are very good though. All the components are there to raise this above the standard hotel dining experience but they are just a bit let down by the food.
Monday, November 02, 2009
Overall rating
Food 4 | Service 9 | Atmosphere 8 | Value for money 6
