It should have been a glorious celebratory lunch, my mate Shandy had turned 40 and he had invited 10 of us out to “Mews of Mayfair” to eat good food and quaff good wine. Baby G was happily around at grandma’s. So my lovely wife and I set off to partake in that long forgotten glorious pre parent cultural phenomenon “The boozy Sunday lunch”. We had been to “Mews” before for drinks and it has the same very cool for school atmosphere of other places on Lancashire Court like “Hush” and “Rocket”. Shandy had organised some champagne for us which we happily quaffed whilst we waited to be shown up to our table. This did take quite a while but we weren’t in a rush though we were quite hungry by the time we were seated at 2PM for a 1PM lunch. The dining room is very different to the fashionably clubby bar downstairs, it’s like going from a Bret Eston Ellis novel into Brideshead revisited. So we were shown to our table in a very bright pristine dining room with an older clientele. it was actually a nice contrast and a great use of the period house.
As there were 10 of us we had a separate menu which I have to say didn’t grab me that much. There seemed to be a surfeit of beetroot on the menu which though seasonal I cannot stand so I went for the last refuge of a scoundrel: “soup of the day”. Actually it was very nice and it had a quails egg in it which I hadn’t seen before. Good as it was it took a very long while to reach us which meant we probably had more wine than usual. The mains were a problem for me, only 4 options, a very expensive steak which the birthday boy had and really enjoyed, a veggie option (no thank you) a baillotine of pheasant which was again seasonal but I’m not a big fan of game so I went for the prawns on samphire…. For my £24 main I got a plate with a little mound of samphire and 3 yes 3 jumbo prawns. Luckily we ordered some sides for the table. Now biting into my first prawn something didn’t quite taste right but being a gung ho and hungry sort of fool I proceeded to eat the meagre offering. My wife’s ballotine was also not well cooked parts of it being dry and tough and others almost raw I noticed she was not the only one in our party who left part of her meal uneaten. Desserts were fine though I was feeling a bit queasy by this point so stuck to ice cream.
Now Let’s not say I am not fair, I did inform the restaurant the following day about the problem with the meal and to their credit they got back to me swiftly, offering a meal on the house, explaining how the dish is sourced, prepared and priced. They also offered to investigate matters further if I wished. I thought that was very professional but I’m reluctant to return there again. All in all we didn’t feel the food warranted the very pleasant surroundings or the hefty prices, they would be better toning down the menu and getting the cooking right. It also took them 4 hours to serve us lunch which I thought was more about encouraging us to drink more. Having said that Shandy really enjoyed his 40th and everyone seemed happy. However I really can’t see myself eating here again. The Olympics are happening this year which means a lot of visitors in central London which means higher end restaurants like Mews need to raise their game or London will regain it’s reputation for bad expensive food!
Wednesday, January 04, 2012
Overall rating
Food 3 | Service 5 | Atmosphere 7 | Value for money 1
This was properly bad, a meagre portion of prawns that probably made me ill, I've never been back