Cucina Asellina at ME London Hotel

A great Italian well worth visiting

I read previous reviews and was slightly nervous when my wife booked this restaurant. The staff couldn't be more helpful and friendly, the atmosphere was very pleasant and the decor very pleasing to the eye. They've obviously spent plenty of money on the place and it works very well.

The food was genuine Italian food rather than the rubbish that often gets served up in London. We both had veal, two different styles and both were delicious . The seafood pasta was perfect and the pizza just about the best I've had in London after living here for 20 years.

The waitress was from Rome and served tirimisu, I've been to Rome 4 times and this won hands down.

Overall I'm astonished by bad reviews, this place deserves plenty of credit for bringing Italian food to London.

Oh and lastly; 3 courses and a cocktail for £25 is a steal.

safe bet

We sat at 7 so a little quiet to begin with, but soon had a nice buzz without being intrusive. There were plenty of staff and service was prompt and attentive. Antipasta selection had a nice mix of modern dishes and classic meat & cheese. Pasta with braised boar was excellent – sticky and rich. Price was good for this location.
A safe bet just off the Strand.

Avoid at ALL costs!!!!

Had heard great things about the new ME hotel and particularly Cuccina Asselina so booked a table for 12 people in January to celebrate my birthday in March. Accepting that an offer of 3 course meal for £25 had been advertised a few days before we were due to dine (not offered by C.A when requested to honour the deal btw) I did expect it to be busy however things started badly when we had to wait over 45 mins for the table and told “sorry, its just busy tonight!”. I would like to have said the food was good as my starter and main were reasonable though not fantastic (baked aubergine & lobster pasta) however overall it was 50/50 hit and miss across the table with main courses having to be sent back to the kitchen. This could still have been forgiven but for the fact that by 11.45pm we still hadnt been offered desserts/coffee after being seated at 9.20pm! All in all it was an EXTREMELY disappointing evening and I felt having organised my birthday dinner there, I let my guests down who had been expected good things and the evening was made worse by having to dispute the bill and get the manager involved in a difficult discussion regarding the service and experience we had. There were clearly not enough staff to cope with the £25 menu offer and staff were rude and indignant about the whole thing. FInally to add insult to injury, we had asked if we could go up to the Radio bar following dinner which the welcome hostess checked and confirmed was ok only to be told when we got to the lift that there was an
1hr plus wait and to basically get lost. This place is a gorgeous hotel and all the makings of somewhere very cool however staff and service are a real let down and do not respect the customer.

Saturday March 16 2013

The food itself was patchy – particularly the hyped pizzas – bland and tasteless as was the lobster fettuccine. the rest was formulaic of these types of establishment
Not the place for a relaxing experience perpetuating the trend of loud noisy restaurants. They also have pushed even further the boundaries of pricing in London
To their credit – our complaints about the food were well received with a courtesy discount of 20 per cent given

We went to Cucina for a girls Sunday lunch and overall I was incredibly impressed. The restaurant was empty at the start but it only opened about a month ago, so I expect it to get far busier, it already is in the evenings. The waiters were friendly, knowledgeable and attentive without being OTT. The food was absolutely delicious – Italian food with an inventive twist to it. It was also very good value for money – a restaurant of this calibre you would expect to cost a lot more and at lunchtimes they do an even better value deal – two courses for £14 or 3 courses for £18. The decor is also lovely – it's modern and ‘clean’ yet has a welcoming, cosy feel to it which is often hard to achieve. I will definitely be coming back.

Atrocious service. Rude and offhand staff all evening. Very unimpressed.

Food is good value for money, but the menu is very confusing and a bit all over the place.

Deco is very 1990's with cream leather etc. Shame that this wasn't a better experience!

I booked this restaurant for my friends birthday,we were greeted very professionally.We had a drink at the bar and the barman was very attentive,After about 30 minutes we had to ask to be shown our table.we ordered our meals and the starters took about 35-45 minutes to arrive the meatballs and the aubergine bake were tasteless.
we did tell the waitress and she apologized.The main course took another 40 minutes to arrive,by this time we were starving we ordered 3 pizzas and a pasta dish,The pasta was dripping in oil and rubbery.The pizzas were again tasteless.The waitress then apologized again and a manager came over to see us. we explained our situation,He told us that he was very busy and would we like more wine,We refused as we were hungry.He then dissapeared to 3 or 4 different tables apologizing to them about their experiences.I called the manager over and asked for our bill.He then came over and said enjoy your wine and be quiet as we have important people in from the press.We are all in our 50s and 60s and we have never been spoken to or treated like this in a restaurant before. We again asked for our bill and the manager just walked away.The saving grace of the evening was a lady who was also a manager
in the restaurant that evening.She was very professional and sympathetic and apologized for his behavior.
23/01/2013

The new ME by Melia Hotel is achingly trendy and I was well aware that it is designed for people a couple of decades younger than me. Nonetheless, I did not feel terribly out of place in the brightly-lit Cucina Asellina, despite the disco background music.
The restaurant is a pretty successful attempt to combine rustic Southern Italian food with hip New York style. The bread selection is good, pasta is nicely al dente and not swimming in sauce and the main courses simple and full of flavour. The menu is a little short so hopefully it will be changed fairly regularly.
The only duff note was a lukewarm espresso which would have been better with a couple of Italian biscuits added.
The two big plus points of the restaurant are the fairly modest prices (allowing for the area and the overall style of the hotel) and the extremely charming service from a very large waiting staff of largely Spanish waitresses.