It was my lovely wife’s birthday last week so as a treat we decided to go out for an early family dinner with Baby G. We have taken him out for meals a bit more recently but you do need to pick your venues and timings carefully. My wife had actually tried "Granger & Co" a couple days earlier for breakfast and had been very impressed. She got chatting to Bill himself and he had recommended we return for a family meal. He suggested 5PM was a good time in there for families with young children. So up we pitched a little before 5 to the new kid on the Westbourne Grove. The restaurant is very sleekly kitted out, a symphony of cream furnishing. Unlike its neighbouring competitors this is a restaurant pure and simple, no deli counter , no home furnishings, the focus is on the diner and the food to order. They were still getting organised for evening service when we came in but we were quickly shown to a spacious table and a high chair attachment was found for baby G. The manageress came over and said that they could do a child’s portion on any of the mains for baby G. So far so good.
However it all went a bit wrong after a promising start. Our waiter who was obviously new to the restaurant, appeared to be new to waitering as he gave us the wrong menus. As it turned out the dinner and lunch menus are very similar but it did result in a couple of the dishes turning up very different to what we envisaged. Also the whole child’s portion promise didn’t seem to have been communicated to the kitchen so baby G got an adults plate and portion. Fortunately the food was good. I had the fish curry which was very nice though for £14 I was expecting a bigger portion. The rest of the food looked and tasted nice. The restaurant soon filled up with a mix of families and people out for a post work bite. This made a nice change from our default early evening place “Pizza Express” which can be like a mausoleum at this sort of time. We did see Bill Granger pop in a couple of times whilst we were there keeping an eye on proceedings.
So we having had our meal I was feeling slightly ambivalent towards this new venture but they then rescued the situation by the waiter turning up at the table with a birthday cake, lighted candles and a quick rendition of happy birthday. Baby G’s nanny had gone in earlier today to see if they were happy to present a cake which they were so dessert came courtesy of M&S. It was a nice touch that not everywhere does nowadays so my opinion improved considerably. So all in all I’d say that Granger & Co is a work in progress, good food but they needed to get the service right. I am always wary of places with too many waiting staff. I always find more can be achieved with fewer but better trained staff. So though not entirely successful, we did enjoy our family birthday meal and we will be back again.
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Overall rating
Food 8 | Service 6 | Atmosphere 8 | Value for money 7