Murano

One of best Italians

We are usually fussy about service but service was great. Food, needless to say, is at top level. Atmosphere was also good – suitable for family, business and romantic occasions as well. It his great package comes with price inevitably – but it's worth the price, I think.

Fantastic meal, wonderful menu and great service. The food is really exciting and the added extra courses makes it feel even more special. Can't recommend highly enough.

First time dining at Murano, we went for my mum's birthday. We went early evening and got off to a slightly unfortunate start when sat next to a table of well refreshed hedge fund managers who'd been out celebrating their work Christmas lunch, and probably spending part of a bonus that is around 10 times as much as my annual earnings! They were fortunately packed off shortly afterwards reducing the noise level by about 80%.

The first thing that strikes you about Murano, other than the hedgies noise, is that it’s grown up – I’m nearly 40 and for most of the evening I was the youngest customer there. It’s also a stunningly dull room – everything is beige and the combination of subdued lighting and slightly too warm heating wasn't conducive to a great atmosphere. All of which makes it sound like I hated it; but I certainly didn't.

Service is generally lovely, polite and effective – though they did seem to have a few initial problems with the drinks order and the bill took one request and one Paddington Bear style hard stare to make appear, but other than that it all worked as you'd hope, so perhaps they've sorted out the gripe lots of other reviews on this site seem to have had.

Food was wonderful, though given the chefs name, the Michelin star and the cost (circa £110 per head for 3 courses, water, wine and a drink before starting) perhaps you've got a right to expect something special, though there are other venues with similar qualities that fail to deliver.

I started with pumpkin tortelli, sage butter and crushed amaretti; pasta is frequently, unless you're eating it in Italy, heavy going, but this was light and delicate, warm autumn flavours. This was followed by halibut, bread purée, pear compote, white onion fondue and scallop velouté – the fish was wonderfully firm, cooked to perfection and the range of accompaniments gave everything a warm sweet twist, the only slight oddity being the white onion, which could easily have been omitted without spoiling anything. To finish chocolate ganache, chestnut parfait, artichoke sorbet and mint – I admit I was jealous when others soufflé with caramel and fresh mint chantilly arrived but then I tasted the chestnut parfait and, if I weren't an atheist, I would have believed I'd discovered heaven.

I enjoyed Murano, great food, good service and value for money is reasonable, though the atmosphere needs something different. I'm not sure it would be ideal for a date, but for your mum's birthday it's great and I'd happily recommend it; though, given I paid the bill, it might be a once a year treat!

Dinner was fantastic,went. For a 40th birthday treat and was not let down, service was very good and the front of house team were very attentive. Starters were all sublime and all the guests were really impressed with this course. Venison main was for me just the best but others had the monkfish that was also very good. Souffles for dessert topped off a great meal, wine list was a bit pricey, but overall a great special evening with fantastic food. To top it off a visit from Angela made the evening!!!

So Angela Hartnett is a jolly old soul, it was nice to see her at front of house before service started, all smiles from the staff and everything looked in place for a great evening. The service looked wobbly from the beginning but we ignored it. Aperitifs took an age (we were the second table to arrive), we received the same ‘amuse bouche’ three times by three different waiters, the ‘Antipasto’ (actually two cold cuts) arrived 30 seconds before the first course and it went further downhill from there. The sommelier was competent but the waiters seemed clueless, dirty plates were left, wine glasses drained and redundant, dessert wine with no dessert. Quite astonishing from what is a Michelin Star restaurant with such an accomplished Chef at the helm. Perhaps this was just an off-night but given the ticket price, I would recommend giving this place a wide berth until more positive reviews appear.

Food was good but the service was really disappointing for such an expensive restaurant.

We arrived to find that they didn't have our booking (despite me getting an SMS from them and an e-mail confirmation) – I had to faff around for 10 minutes with my Blackberry to find the confirmation to prove I genuinely did have a reservation. All this was very embarrassing for us and our guests and the staff seemed like they couldn't have cared less that my wife was upset by it all.
A complimentary drink would have been nice as a token gesture but all we got was a half-hearted apology.

What should have been a great evening was completely ruined and when we declined to pay the discretionary service charge because of this, the sommelier made it very clear he wasn't happy and he was actually extremely rude.

We loved Angela's restaurant at The Connaught but unfortunately we won't be returning to Murano.

I lunched at Murano on a Saturday with a friend, for his birthday. It’s a beautiful room, with well-spaced tables and fantastic lighting. We sat at the top of the restaurant, with a view of the kitchen through a large window – when we arrived, they apologised to us for sitting us there, but we thought it one of the best tables – not least because we could see that Angela Hartnett was cooking that day, which we got very over-excited about.

And we were right to be. It isn’t often you have a faultless dining experience, but this was truly it. The food was absolutely sublime – in particular the quail raviolo that I had as a starter. The little extra touches – the arancini and delicious salami that came before the first course; the intensely flavoured sorbets that came before pudding (special mention for the basil one); and the fantastic breads, all meant that this excelled any of the other Michelin starred restaurants I've eaten in in London – including the Square, which has been my favourite for some years.

The service was very charming and I'd also like to specially commend the Sommelier, who gave us a great recommendation for a white, which was exactly the same price as the one we told him we were thinking of – a very tactful response, we thought.

I’ll definitely be going back.

One of the best restaurants I have visited. The food and wines were exceptional. Not being on a budget, we left the choice of wines entirely to the sommelier, who didn't disappoint. We did not ask for the price of the wines and were pleasantly surprised by the final bill. of £149 per head for a party of 4. This included Belinis to start, a bottle of white and red wine and a superb pudding wine to accompany a fantastic apricot oufflé. Not cheap at £149 per head for a party of 4,.but worth every penny. The staff were charming and humerous, but not servile in any way. The decor was pleasantly restful. Definitely will return, perhaps to try their set lunch at £30 per person.

Having booked well in advance, to find all we could get was a 9:30 reservation on a Friday night, we still decided to go. Had heard such positive things about Murano…what's the difference if one eats a bit later than usual?We were celebrating a colleague's engagement, and wanted it to be special.

Arrrived at 9:25, to be told our table “wasn't quite ready” yet.

30 minutes later it still wasn't ready.

Finally shown to a table at 10:25, (!!) famished, and as I was the host, struggled not to let the staff know just how unprofessional I thought it was. ( And certainly no 'gosh we're sorry would you like a glass of something on us?' in evidence…)

Indifferent apologies from the staff. The food was lovely, if a bit rich. But inevitably, we were left eating it in a restaurant devoid of anyone else (all the other more timely seated people had left long ago!!). This would not have been so bad – (could hear each other talk), except for the staff hovering too obviously impatient for us to be gone as well.

-Very expensive. But unless the service gets its act together, not worth it.

Food : 8. Experience : 0.

It may be a big gamble for Angela Hartnett taking on Murano herself, but with food this good, I really hope that she succeeds. She certainly deserves to flourish here, with a free hand to run the kitchen as she pleases.

The restaurant itself is all muted pastels: beiges, creams and that non-entity of a colour: magnolia. The atmosphere too is muted and hushed, maybe so as to allow the hedge fund billionaire clientele to hear what their nieces, some of whom were young enough to please Berlusconi, have to say, without the need to resort to their ear trumpets.

We settled for the a la carte menu, rather than the lovely looking set menu that comes complete with matching wines should one wish. Tasting menus are good for two reasons: firstly, they allow the chef to show of his (or indeed here, her) skills; and secondly they take away the element of choice. Now choice is generally a good thing: would I choose to support Arsenal? Of course; which fan of fine footballing skills would think of doing anything else? Would I cover myself in honey and run through an apiary? No. Well, not unless it was for Angelina Jolie. The trouble with Murano is that the menu contains so many of my kind of dishes that making a choice reduces me to Robbie the Robert, fused into a state of incapacity, unable to decide between the myriad right answers.

We pondered this dilemma over a glass of passion fruit bellini and some excellent amuse bouche (surely there is an Italian word for this? Divertire bocca perhaps?). Indeed, so excellent were they that, having seen us devour the first plate, the attentive waiter immediately replenished the parmesan balls with a far healthier portion. The waiting is attentive without being overbearing, the sommelier (again, surely there is an Italian word for this too?) guided us through the wine tome and the head waiter did that really annoying thing of taking everyone’s order without writing it down. And getting it place-perfect.

Finally decide we did, and none of the dishes was anything other than excellent: the pumpkin tortellini was smooth, rich and sweet, with the pasta perfectly al dente and the crumbled amaretti biscuits working far better than it sounds as though it should; the grilled red mullet was a sizeable dish, replete with a smear of basil puree; and the sweetbreads cooked to perfection.

A main course of chicken wings with halibut was an odd, but excellent, combination and the beef fillet a nice slab, cooked as asked atop a mound of berlotti beans. The beef was apparently Casterbridge beef. Now I am no Hardy scholar, but I thought that he made the place up? Whatever, it was lovely: maybe it had been hung for the last 130 years.

Following on from the pre-desert sorbets, the desert-deserts were again all lovely: we were warned that the tiramisu was nothing like we would ever have had before, and the waiter was right. All the ingredients were there (chocolate, mascarpone, coffee, cream etc), but the whole had been deconstructed, with each main flavour having its own place on the plate, leaving you to reconstruct or have separately.

With all the superlatives (the food, the service etc) there are downsides/niggles/downright silliness: the atmosphere, as noted above, is not really there and do you really need three foot high decanters to pour the wine? Yes all very trendy and all that, but the poor pourer practically had to stand at the next table to deliver the wine. These are as mere nothings to the prices. Yes this is Mayfair, yes we had a couple of bottles of wine between us and a cocktail each and yes I know that there are always those little add-ons that add up, but how a £60 per head menu for four of us came to over £160 a head is beyond me. Gawd knows how much it would have been had we been trying to impress our nieces.