Georgina's

When this restaurant was Henderson's, who designed the layout, the menu was great and the food was very good. Now, although the layout is almost the same, the chairs are very uncomfortable, the menu is awful and the service is bad. There is no brunch. Instead, there is a strange collection of things. Worse, the American (?) hostess, who shouts at you when you enter, puts on such a phony accent full of ‘love’ and ‘dearie’ that you want to turn around and run. Such a shame. I would NOT recommend this restaurant with its currect menu and service team.

So disappointing a Saturday night 20% full staff hadnt got a clue . Difficult to see how it will survive. Not even good value for money.Shame

Georgina's has an inviting atmosphere, with a light, spacious-feeling environment that makes the most of what's really quite a small space. The food on display at the deli counter adds to the appeal. The female waiting staff were all very friendly and helpful, although we were left too long and had to ask if we could order drinks, from, unfortunately a male employee who has not learned how to smile.

The food was good. We had two salads, both of which were well flavoured, perhaps a little salty. The mint, pea and broad bean pasta was a winner: delicately flavoured, with beautifully textured fresh pasta.

However, here we come to the problem: the price. When you're paying £6 for a salad, you expect more than half an aubergine on a few spoons of cous cous. And, there was a cover charge. Small print on the menu mentioned it, but we didn't notice until we got the bill. When looking at a menu, you want to be enticed by dishes, not checking for hidden clauses. No pun intended, but a cheap trick by Nicola Horlick.

Georgina's will probably be a success with the Barnes bankers and their wives, but we won't be returning. It's a shame because the food was nice, but the prices felt quite insulting to non-bankers who go out for fairly priced food, not to be seen spending money on it.

We tried Georgina's on its third day of opening, having seen it mentioned online and in the press
We left very underwhelmed, and e-mailed our observations a few days later. No reply had arrived 2 weeks later at time of writing this.

The food was variable – the bean salad starter was fine; the Tuna main was hardly “seared” but the meal and sauce was tasty; the Poussin was not very enjoyable – it did not taste of either the billed chilli or garlic – which was the main reason for ordering it. For dessert the banana and pecan cake was stodgy and rather unpleasant – we left nearly all of this

Our main waiter was clearly inexperienced – when asked about wine he had no info on the bottle we were interested in, did not seek any assistance, and simply referred us to the two most expensive whites instead
He did not come back to us at all at the end after we asked him if there was a cab office nearby or a cab number
We went to the counter to ask again and the manageress (who, to be fair, was trying hard to keep things together it seemed) sorted it promptly.

The waitress who brought the bill did ask for our opinion (we said about chicken and cake as above) but her only observation was that the cake was nice earlier – not ideal response to the fact that 80% of it was still on the plate.

The prices are quite high for the quality of food in a cafe/bistro style and the one pound cover charge seemed unnecessary. I had rather thought / hoped that the restaurant had some kind of charitable tie-up given its orgin as a tribute to Nicola Horlick's daughter which had been referred to in all the press cover about the opening – that unnecessary cover charge could have been donated to leukaemia research instead maybe ??

We were very unlikely to return anyway ; but definitely won't if they cant be bothered to reply to my e-mail. And the taxi driver compounded it with his own stories of disgruntled customers from the first couple of days. They should recommend a new cab firm too for their own sakes !!