Quince

Poor value for money, small portions and not that great food. Our skewers were dry and lamb cutlets – of which you get just 2 were burnt ! The place has potential but with these prices they should deliver soon.

Dinner on 16th August

Having read about Quince and Silvena Rowe in FT, we decided to go, last night in London before our cruise trip! Couldn't imagine a better choice! Food was great, chef was there and very funny indeed! We love our food and living in New York we are spoiled, but that dinner was an experience indeed! lamb boreks were delicious and crispy!
Avocado hummus was just so light and tasty! Lamb, the pulled lamb was phenomenal and i don't even like lamb! The baklava at the end was very special too…we shall be back! Diane Bell

I was extremely excited to dine at Quince; the heavily spiced menu sounded exotic and tasty. Sadly I was hugely disappointed and the only saving grace was the service. We started out with the Avocado Hummus, Borek Cigars and King Prawns. The Avocado Hummus was tasteless and the flat bread was stale. The Borek Cigars were soggy. The King Prawns although cooked perfectly, were tiny and not worth the £21. We then ordered the Pulled Lamb, Shoestring Fries and Yellow Cherry Orange Fennel Salad. The Shoestring fries were anything but Shoestring and in fact looked like fried from frozen pub chips. The lamb was tough, dry and the size of two small fists. Although flavoured well it was definitely not 12 hour slow cooked shoulder of lamb. The server saw our faces and immediately agreed that the lamb looked a bit different than previous evenings. She also laughed in agreement about the Shoestring Fries. Immediately The manager immediately came over and apologized. Within 20 minutes they replaced the lamb with a lovely rare almost blue cooked cote de boeuf. Finally something to praise along with the service! We decided to give dessert a go as well. We ordered Orange Baklava and the Chocolate Peanut Brownie with Passion Fruit Yoghurt. The Orange Baklava was deliciously orange, flaky and buttery however the pistacio ice cream tasted old. You know the taste, when ice cream melts and then is refroze? And the Chocolate Peanut Brownie with Passion Fruit Yoghurt…nothing chocolate about it. It tasted more like an overcooked orange hybrid cheesecake – fairy cake. As embarrassed as I was, I sent it back. By far the worse meal I have had in London in years but the server was wonderful, genuine and apologetic. Dine at your own risk.

Eastern Promise Delivered
It was my 36th Wedding Anniversary on the 20th June my wife decided to treat me to a weekend of heaven in the Mayfair hotel. Why the Mayfair? Well apart from its great reputation it was the home of Silvena Rowe’s new restaurant Quince, we love Silvena and we love Turkish food mainly because my father Huseyin was Turkish. On arrival at Heathrow my wife had an accident and broke a rib and suffered concussion. Our plan was to arrive in London early Friday 17th and go shopping but because of the accident we booked into our room and decided to stay in the Hotel for Lunch so we opened the door of Quince and found the decor to be truly spectacular and was greeted by a lovely young lady (your Restaurant Manager) and shown to a table, the service was amazing we ordered champagne and looked over the menu and was guided by our server who explained the menu in detail and gave personal recommendations, we had borek cigars, avocado hummus, squid and king prawns then had desert of lemon tart and rhubarb brulee. This was a wonderful experience. We decided to buy Silvena’s books as I am a Chef and wanted to try out the recipes, at this time Silvena appeared at our table and signed the books for us, she had been busy talking to all the guest throughout our visit, we found this to be fantastic that she found the time to talk to everyone as this is the best way to get feedback fresh from the guests. We explained to Silvena that we had not intended to be there for lunch as we had booked Saturday night for our Anniversary treat, Silvena said that she was appearing on Saturday kitchen and was not intending to be there on Saturday night how lucky were we to see her on Friday lunch. We then had a small walk around the streets close to Mayfair then retired to our room as my wife was now feeling worse from the effects of the accident, we ordered room service food for dinner and this was also beyond expectations. On Saturday after a great breakfast we did the tourist things, Harrods etc. In the evening we got dressed in our best bib and tucker and made our way to Quince we were again seated by you restaurant manager, had champagne and to our great surprise Silvena came up to our table and sat down beside us, as she had made a special effort to come and see us on our special night, she enquired of my wife’s health and complemented her by saying she looked lovely, we spoke about the Saturday Kitchen and how Quince was booming because of this, Silvena then left to go home we proceeded to order borek bites, duck in fois gras and ottoman spiced lamb cutlets then sides of rice pilaf, lettuce heart salad, pomegranate salad followed by pork in blueberry molasses and lamb and beef skewers an absolutely wonderful experience, we had to have bitter orange baklava, I have had baklava all over the world and never has any come close to this and made even sweeter by the server announcing that Silvena had paid for the dessert, wow. We have since met up with Silvena at taste of Edinburgh and were blown away with her friendliness and were granted front row seats to watch her demonstration at the AEG stand where we were asked by the AEG presenter to share our experience of Quince with the audience, which we did from our Hearts.
We would like to thank everybody at the Mayfair and Quince for making our Anniversary truly memorable.

I was in London for the weekend of the 1st of July and stayed at the fantastic Mayfair hotel I have stayed here before on leisure but did not realise they had done up the restaurant I decided to have dinner on the Saturday night in quince their new and improved eastern med concept with a celeb chef in charge no less.I have seen chef slivena Rowe on tv before and she always looked as if she did very interesting food.my wife and I were shown to our table by a waiter who was very familiar with the menu and made some great suggestions for our meal we had the lamb cutlets which were fantastic love the truffle and tahini.the squid was crisp and full of flavour and the duck foie grass melted in your mouth.we also ordered the cote de bouef to share and being from Scotland we know about beef and it was great very tender and cooked perfectly by the team of chefs who you could see through the open plan kitchen they really seemed to be enjoying their work what passion it can only delivery a great experience.we finished with strawberry and Rose ice cream
Which was delicious.I really enjoyed our stay in the hotel and our experience at quince it was well worth the money

What a waste of money! Baby crispy squid was neither baby nor crispy-we sent it back once and it returned in no better shape – dirty oil!!! The fish was not cooked- the chefs looked like they were having a party in the kitchen not interested in preparing food! You would think the chef patron would have been in her new fledgling establishment on a so called busy night – obviously too busy filming … I give this place one year before it closes and that's being generous.If you want decent Eastern Mediterranean food go to the Edgware road – far better value and quality.they could not even manage to bring us a chilled bottle of wine! Robbery!!! On a positive note our waiter was very knowledgeable and polite.