Fakhreldine

What's happened to this restaurant? I came here years ago and it was ‘an occasion’. It's not now – not only is it very scruffy and needs a refurb, it was very basic too – no cocktail napkins, poor quality chairs etc. not plush how you imagine a Lebanese restaurant experience to be, or how it used to be. The main thing that bothered me, apart from the timid and inefficient service (is it that difficult to get right?!), was that the wine we ordered was not the wine we got. We were given totally different (and no doubt cheaper!) wine! We noticed and they changed it, but this happened twice. We felt tricked. The manager was no-where to be seen and nobody was running the show. Don't bother going here, it's not worth it. The food was good and the male host that showed us to our table was very helpful, but the drinks, service, atmosphere and decor were really awful. A frustrating evening and I couldn't wait for it to be over – with service at this speed, it wasn't over quickly!

This place is scuffy, needs a lick of paint. The staff are in a world of their own, completely untrained and inexperienced. It took over an hour to get our food and we were never offered more drinks. We found ourselves waving frantically to get attention. The staff all walk around with blinkers on. We asked where our food was three times, and the waiter never actually came back to the table with the answer.

The wine that we ordered- Pinot Grigio, by the the glass, was definately not Pinot Grigio and we had to insist that they bring us a new bottle and pour the wine in front of us to get Pinto Grigio (I think the wine they were giving us was some Lebonese Wine maybe?). When we asked to speak to the Manager because, after an hour and a half, we still hadn't any signs that our main courses were coming, the waitress looked horrified. It turns out that she had to phone him as he wasn't actually there.

The food was good but nothing else. Don't put yourself through it. It was a stressful experience. It should be called Fawlty Towers.

This restaurant is terrible.
the waitress playing with their mobiles and they not understand plain and simple english
the cocktail is not profissional
very poorly managed.
i do not RECOMMEND anyone go there to waste their money with poor serivce

Great value for the money! Central London, excellent friendly service and not overly fussy, beautiful view over Green Park, great ambiance and amazing food. What else could you ask for?

Went there for a business lunch in June. The whole place needs a refreshing touch, as the carpets and upholstery are stained and wall paint is flaky. The restaurant was nearly empty at lunchtime (3 tables occupied), but the service was incredibly slow. There were at least 4 waiters hanging around who made an effort to ignore our empty plates and glasses. Fresh vegetable nibbles served before mezze were clearly chopped at least an hour before – the carrots sticks were getting dry. Orders are taken with little attention. Sambousek was really nice, baba ganoush, although tasting nice, was very poorly blended (had huge chunks of fiber it in). For mains, lamb cubes on skewers were perfect – tender and succulent with perfect flavour, and chicken cubes on skewers were really nicely marinated (if a bit dry). The dessert (we shared pancakes with nuts) was disappointing – did not quite match the description in the menu. Mint tea was good, however, strong and full of flavour.
Throughout the lunch the service remained very slow and unattentive, we spent quite a bit of time sitting at an empty table.
Overall, a nice lunch but only worth taken if there's a 50% menu discount. I won't pay full price for that combination of food and service.

Extremely slow service: had to wait for 1 hour 15 mins between the starters and the main course! When the main course arrived, it was lukewarm, and not hot. The main course was a lamb dish but there were only 3 tiny lamb bits on the plate and the rest was rice and carrots. And they charged 22 pounds for 3 tiny lamb bits which must have cost them 2 pounds to make. Terrible value for money. Stay away.

Unfortunately I was DISGUSTED with my ENTIRE experience at Fakhreldine. From the food and service to the decor and cost, everything was beneath poor quality; I cannot believe we actually paid for what can only be described as an awful evening. Believe me, I am generally quite a laidback and easy-going person and happily overlook mishaps but on this occasion everything was wrong.

Being deemed a “top” eatery in one of the plushest areas of London I did not brace myself for what lay ahead. We had planned a family get-together for a birthday meal, there were eight of us in total, and we had taken in gifts and our own cake for the birthday girl. This is how the evening went:

1. As we walked in a waiter accidentally dropped a bottle of alcohol over my brother’s trousers and shoes. We let it pass thinking it was just an accident, little did we realise that this was the beginning of many more. My brother quietly cleaned himself up…note by, being Muslim alcohol is a strictly forbidden and having it poured over one is a bit like a vegetarian being submerged in animal fat.
2. The table we had specifically BOOKED was not available. So we were squashed into a corner without a choice and no table cloth, while all the others had one.
3. The interior was below average if not clichéd. The table decor was tacky with very little effort and pieces of cutlery were missing from each of our sets, so we had to request knives and forks as they went around with a container of cutlery.
4. Come ordering time, pretty much everything from the menu was UNAVAILABLE…this is peak time, evening meal, the place is packed out. At one point they said they didn’t have falafels…is this not the equivalent of saying the chip shop has no chips…?
5. The manager (yes, manager, they were apparently short staffed) suddenly brought over a bunch of drinks and placed them on our table…we had not placed a drinks order at this point. The waitress who was about to take orders was shaking her head in embarrassment. After we explained, the manager came over and took the drinks away…and tried to blame my brother for the mistake instead of apologising, saying he had called out ‘carrot juice’ when he clearly hadn’t…
6. When our drinks eventually arrived…we were given two extra drinks which we had not ordered. The waiters had no clue what was going on. They were just running around like headless chickens and creating an uncomfortable chaos. They were stressed out and barely completed a single task in one go.
7. Suddenly the lights went off…yep…no kidding…they readjusted it about three times.
8. All would have been forgiven had the food been worthwhile…I felt like crying when I saw my meal…OH MY GOODNESS…what a waste…the meal was horrible…literally a boiled chicken with potatoes floating around it…the rest of my family had no feast either…our plates were pretty much left looking as they had arrived…nobody finished more than a quarter of their meals. 9. Furthermore…two meals had a hair in them and three were undercooked.
10. But wait…there’s more…after an awful meal we had to wait for ages to get the attention of a waiter to clear the table…when they eventually did…a little while later a waiter came along with a desert to our table…we explained that this was the third time the wrong order had been sent to our table…the waiter did not seem to have a clue about what was going on…he took the desert and rushed away.
11. When we had arrived we had handed over our birthday cake to the manager to serve at the end of the meal…when we told the waitress to bring it out…she came back with…wait for it…yes…the very same desert that had been sent over earlier by mistake, this time it had two candles in it (served without a spoon)…we were flabbergasted… the waitress began singing and clapping and we felt like we had entered the twilight zone…the poor birthday girl looked beyond confused…turns out the waitress had no idea what we had asked her to do and eventually my sister-in-law had to search for the cake all over the restaurant and this ended up in a tug-of-war with the manager…who wanted to serve the cake now as an apology but later got irritated and mocked my sister-in-law when she said she would write poor review…we had enough…none of us wanted to be there a second longer, we decided to take our cake and presents all back home for the birthday girl to open them there and enjoy our cake in peace.
12. However we had to wait a further fifteen minutes to request for the bill and when it arrived, they had the audacity to add service charge to it (which is optional) but after the evening we had, one would have imagined they would have given the meal for free from the embarrassment of it all…clearly this must be regular practice for they did not seem to feel bad about it. They also charged us extra for drinks that we had not ordered. Normally we would never do this, but for ruining a family meal and a birthday treat we told them to take the service charge off. It took them a further twenty minutes to process the bill…their card machines were broken.

Everyone please save your time, money and energy…don’t go for things just because it seems like the done thing…at the end of the day if a food specialist cannot give you good food then what is the point? Expensive prices and places don’t always mean quality content. As a family of sixteen we have a varying range of tastes. We also love eating out and can do so up three or four times a week…Fakhreldine has by far been our worst experience in dining out.

Got to be one of the worst restaurant experience I've ever had.
I’ve been here before with my work colleagues and I had a wonderful experience. I kept on going on and on about this place to everyone. I decided to go here again for a family birthday and booked a table for 9 people. The problems started from the word go. I had requested a window seat, they put us in the in the middle. There were 6 plate settings so they had to squeeze the rest of us on the same table. Most of us didn’t have cutlery. We had to ask 3 times and they still forgot the forks! Before we even had a chance to look at the menu, the manager bought a trey of drinks over then got angry with us for drinking them as the order was for another table! Then when we did order our drinks, again they bought over extra drinks that we didn’t order! Out of the two Mint Lemonades, one didn’t have sugar in which was sent back. Then when we came to order, we were told by the waitress that they didn’t have most of the things we wanted off the menu so we had to quickly pick alternatives. One starter (Hoummos) was dumped on the table, it took about 20 minutes for the others to arrive, by that time all of us had shared the 1st one between ourselves! Out of the 2 Soujouk (sausages), one was drenched in lemon; the other was hard and over cooked. We kept trying to get their attention for them to clear the tables. Yet again we were bought over main course dishes that we hadn’t ordered that we had to send back. When our mains came they were on huge dishes… but taste was taste was a different matter completely. We had to send two of the mixed grills back as they weren’t cooked properly and were still cold. They bought them back after everyone had finished eating and was burnet to the bone. My Aubergines with ‘lamb cubes’ and ‘crispy bread’ was how can I put it nicely… 3 slithers of aubergine with a bit of mince meat and completely covered in the croutons we had for our soup – so literally, it was a large plate full of croutons – I ate the aubergines and sent the rest back! The Boneless chicken had a huge bone in it and was drenched in lemon – both of the people who ordered it, left the whole thing and ate the 2 potatoes that were on their plates! The lamb in the Musakaa was undercooked and rubbery. We waited and waited and waited for them to clear up our tables and bring the cake over that we had bought with us. Eventually they bought over yet another desert we hadn’t ordered. That was it! I went and had a word with the manager – he was so arrogant and refused to listen to a word I had to say. I told him I was going to complain he said “are you now, that’s nice?”. We asked for the bill – they had added the extra drinks and a service charge! The cheek! The audacity. How dare they after everything they put us through. We made them take off all the extras and the bill came to £125 as I had 50% off with a TasteLondon card. 2 words – Never Again.

Still my favourite Lebanese restaruarnt, Fakehreldine has great views, great food and friendly service. There has been a 50% off deal running which makes it very good value (including a glass of decent house wine). Mezze is the thing here, though the main dishes are all OK the mezze is stupendous and it is easy to overeat. There's a new, cheaper restaurant downstairs now, haven't tried that yet but I hope it's good as it replaced an excellent Italian place. Don't over order!

Fakhreldine has lost its former glory. Inspite of a great location and well presented decor the food nor the service matches up to the standard. It may all well be ok for the expense account travellers, which has dried up now, this restaurant needs better management and leadership.

I went with some clients from the US who were very keen on good Lebanese food. They took a long time to bring the menus and then when we asked a few questions the waitress was clueless, she went to ask someone and came back 20 mts later. My client pointed out that it was rather a long time for an answer to a simple question and she just scorned at us.

The waiter brought over the food, after placing it on the table none of it matched what we ordered (we ordered vegetarian only) only then he realised it was the WRONG table. Finally after a 45 minute wait the food came and again one of the orders was not what we ordered – it was with meat. We asked for some hot sauce the waitress came back 30 mts later with the sauce by then we had finished our meals

i regret the experience and would never go back with clients to this place.

I took my husband out for dinner here as he loves lebanese food. When we got there we were seated at a table right next to the window, with a beautiful view overlooking Green Park – it was very romantic. My husband eats Lebanese often, and he said it was some of the best he'd had in London. We had the set menu, the Mezze 12, where we had 12 different types of Mezze, chose our main course and had a gorgeous platter of fruit and lebanese pastries to finish. I didnt have a deal, we payed full price and I still thought it was great value. £31 for ample amounts of fantastic food, we left very satisfied. The service was attentive and very helpful, they descibed every dish to us and expianed what was in them, it was great. I will definately be returning!

I booked Fakhreldine on the strength of the other reviews and the rather enticing 50% + a glass of wine offer. I'm really glad I did as I got some excellent cuisine served attentively by a charming, helpful waitress. It was Sunday night and so not exactly buzzing, but there were enough tables filled to provide a pretty good atmoshere. The views over Green park were also nice (though, as a London park, hardly spectacular!)

I was in a lamb mood, so I chose two of the lamb based bread mezze and the 5 spiced lamb main. They were delicious and my only criticism of either was that there could have been more of the ‘sauce’ that came with the main. I'm pretty sure 4 out of the 5 spices lay in that sauce and there wasn't really enough for the masses of lamb (three diffferent cuts, shoulder, shank and another I wasn't sure about!).

Because of the offer, it was extremely good value @ about £21/person including tips and bizzarely, a small cover charge. Also, cheekily they put a 12.5% service charge on the bill based on the pre-discount cost of the meal. I didn't contest it however as I though the service was excellent and deserved the bit extra.

If I want Lebanese in London, I doubt I'll be trying anywhere else as long as Fakhreldine is in business.

Excellent mezze, great location but, outside of special offers, it can feel overpriced, especially when one ends up at one of the dark and noisy side tables near the bar. The special offer is good value and, unusually in my experience, the house wine is pleasant. Service is unfortunately hit-and-miss, with longish wait times (from when shown to the table to when the menu and the fresh vegetables arrive) and staff that sometimes does not seem to understand orders well.

However, a lunchtime table by the window can hardly be beaten for a quiet catch-up (or a more formal meeting) over good food.

I am shocked by some of the other posts.
I had an amazing time when i went there few weeks ago. The mezze were delicious and my main was even better. I had the 5 spiced lamb for my main and it was heaven,
The wine list was extensive and my partner was also very impressed. I have told all my friends to go,
The staff was most attentive. I thoroughly enjoyed my time and will be going back for the views the food and the atmosphere.

Food was good, prefered the Meze to the mains – great food to share. Got the wrong main sent to me and the waiters werent too bothered about changing it (a case of the waiter is always right!!). I used the 50% offer with a free glass of wine and our meal (with additional bottle of wine between four) came to £25 each – only with the offer was it good value, without it then its very overpriced. The location is great with views over green park and it was pretty busy for a monday night. Would probably go back but only with a similar offer.

How time has changed this place, unfortunately not for the better either. Fakhreldine was once a winner for a good lebanese dinner, with great views over Green park and bustling Piccadilly. Upon my last visit in September 2008, the restaurant provided both excellent service and also a menu to please the senses. This time however both service and menu seemed to have taken a tumble. Waiters were insincere and unattentive and food was ok, but missed that special element it once had, with clashing ingredients and badly designed dishes (seabass without any sides and a mushy tasteless onion ‘dip’ stuck all over it). The only thing half decent left about this place is the lebanese wine and its a shame its not showcased well – I overheard the waiter at the table behind saying he'd run out of it and suggested a sicilian wine which was “just as good”! About six months ago I said this place was worth a visit but now its worth avoiding if you can help it. The only time I may pop in now is if I'm in Piccadilly and its raining cats and dogs, in which case a glass of hot Moroccan mint tea might be just the thing – and only thing this restaurant can serve well.

SHOCKING AGGRESSIVE & ABUSIVE SERVICE!!

We booked a table on an offer which included a discount on food and a complimentary glass of wine per person. We clarified with the waitress that we would only be ordering mezze who confirmed the discount and wine would be included as per the offer. At the end of the meal we were surprised that the bill had a charge for the wine.

On questioning the wine, we were aggressively informed that we need to order mains also to redeem the wine offer (although this is contrary to the offer on the web and condradicts what the waitress stated). Out of principal, I felt it was unfair for the wine to be included as a charge item given the clarification by both the web and the waitress before placing our order.

Both the manager & owner, became increasingly aggressive and abusive (verbally and once physically!!) stating that the bill needed to be paid in full or they would call the police. I invited them to make the call, although I stated that they are wasting policere sources. We were further told to stand outside the restaurant in the rain, told never to enter the restaurant ever again, and moreover insulted by the owner stating that we 'shouldn't go to such a restaurant if we couldn't f*&%ing afford to pay for it'!!

In sum, food good…but the whole experience was awful. I would suggest customer service training but it seems fultile due to abysmal ability of both the owner and manager themselves to manage such simple customer affairs.

I first discovered this wonderful gem on my way back from Bahrain in the late 80's and it has only gotten better with time! For Yankee tourists, the spotty service in other ‘fine’ dining establishments can escalate to the truly farcical in the blink of an eye, but not so at Fakhreldine. I arrived without a reservation as my flight was delayed, so I suddenly had 6 extra hours. Hmmmm. Should I stay at Heathrow or zip into town and have a great meal? And the correct answer is ‘zip into town’. I was greeted at the door in a warmly gracious manner (bags and all). The host graciously seated me and asked if I'd eaten there before, and I told him just how long ago it had been. Well, he acted like I was his long lost sister. There were several parties in the restaurant, but the post-modern, zen-like decor makes each table feel like it's in a private room. The lighting is especially flattering to both romantic young couples and travel-weary jet-setters who thought at the last minute to opt for dinner in the city.
Food is marvelous, fresh, lightly prepared, but harkening back to what was prepared for home celebrations when we all had much more time. I love their mezze, those small dishes much like tapas but eminently more interesting and delicious. Their lamb dishes are excellent, and it is evident that the kitchen loves what they send to the table. The Lebanese wines are delicious and overlooked both in the UK and the US, but I hope more diners are adventuresome and try some of these gems. For a true mezze meal, order Arak (like ouzo, but lighter and less oily on the palate) and drink over crushed ice with a little water. Fabulous.
The prices are a bit high here, and if they weren't, many people would eat here much more often. While it's a bit of a splurge, it is well worth it. I met another group of people at the restaurant (from the Gulf) and they were amazed that I would drag myself and my luggage into the restaurant just for a meal. Or maybe they were amazed because I was a Yank who was so desperate for great mezze! I was invited to join them, and we had a marvelous time talking politics, fashion, art, science and music. When my bill was presented, I was told my new friends had insisted on paying! As I bid them all goodnight, the host had gotten the same cab driver so it was off to the airport with a small package of cookies and sweets, courtesy the host. It is small touches and kindnesses that keeps me coming back whenever I am in London. Superb food, the warmest hospitality, very good dancing, and new friends whenever I visit. You won't be disappointed, in any way.