Restaurant Review: 1 Lombard Street

Review 5: 1 Lombard Street
1 Lombard Street, London EC3V 9AA

If you order the roast turbot Sir, it will take 45 minutes to arrive.

So I ordered the fillet of sea bass. After nearly 50 minutes, Watlington asked the waitress where the seabass was and noted that we could have had the roast turbot by now. Five minutes later the seabass arrived. Pleasant but unremarkable and accompanied by a sea of green flavourless gunge, otherwise known as mash potato (Cadbury's Smash would have tasted nicer). My fish was accompanied by literally six penny size slices of bland vegetables - they were either peppers or courgettes.

1 Lombard Street is a restaurant for all those City PR types who make so much more money than those other PR people in Soho. The cuisine is distinctly nouveau, with extreme small portions, decorated with the odd vegetable. Unsurprisingly, 1 Lombard Street is also extremely expensive.

The interior is vast: you enter a huge brasserie and a small restaurant is at the back. The toilet amazingly had a giant plasma TV screen (turned off) inside and a piano was blocking the entrance. Absolutely bizarre.

The service is relatively decent other than the long wait for food, although it is too fawning rather than friendly. The waiters and waitresses seem to have been over trained. My companions had a risotto, so small that a mouse would have begged for more and a veal steak (also tiny proportioned). I did see a huge fish being carted to one table and shown to the happy customers. However, after close inspection, you could see that that it was buffeted by bone and boosted by rice. When the filleted versions arrived at the customers table, they also had relatively average portions. At least the green tea was good. Finest genuine tea leaves. They must have a good supplier. To be fair, the petit fours that arrived with the tea and coffee were highly tempting and beautifully laid out.

Enter this place and you feel like you are in a vast factory, a conveyer belt of Conranism. Style over substance. It is not a place to have an enjoyable meal. Just one of those ghastly places to be seen with the PR men.

To read more by Watlington, see Watlington.