San Lorenzo Fuoriporta

We had a work lunch today for 13people and we were all served at the same time. We were treated extremely well and all of our different choices for meals were accommodated.

It was a fantastic lunch – perhaps some a little cool but when serving 13 all together with good quality food no need to explain.

My pizza was so large I couldn't finish it and everyone agreed their steaks were lovely.

Very reasonable for what we had – we had the lunch menu as opposed to a la carte.

Great lunch, great staff and good food.

Would highly recommend

Let me begin by saying that the food was mostly excellent. The asparagus and shaved parmesan worked wonderfully. One of the diners had the tricolour salad whih she thoughly enjoyed. My beef steak was well cooked and very tasty. There could have been more rosemary potatos but I guess that comes down to portion control. One of my fellow diners had the seafood mixed grill, which he said was good and tasty but was quite expensive for what it was.

Sadly the service was dreadful. The waiter's standard of English was poor. On placing the order I tried to ascertain whether our meals were complete or if they needed any side orders. He just did not understand the question so I ordered French beans and broccolli anyway. As we were enjoying our gin and tonic aperitifs he brought the botle of Chianti and offered a taste. I pointed out that I still had half a glass of gin and tonic left and I would try the wine when that was finished. Why do restaurants offer wine tasting when they can see you are still drinking the aperitif? Some drinks don't mix well and it spoils the enjoyment of both of them. It should be basic customer serviceto observe this and also, I assume, they want their wine to be appreciated. This delay in the wine tasting proved to be our undoing. Gin and tonics were completed. The starters arrived, were enjoyed and the plates taken away. The full bottle of wine just stood there and was ignored by every member of staff that passed our table. Eventually I brought it to the attention of one of the, assumed, management team. His response was “Well you could have asked” I pointed out that asking was what I was currently doing. He then asked if I wanted to taste the wine and I said yes. He poured the wine into the white wine glasses after I had said it was OK. One of our group insisted it served in a red wine glass and got some interesting non-verbal communication. At no time did anyone top up our glasses and for the rest of the evening we were left to fend for ourselves.

Desert came and went. I gather the panna cotta was excellent. It then took 3 attempts to get the bill and 2 more to get someone to take payment. As we left the restaurant there was no “thank you” or “have a good evening”. For 3 diners it was almost £200. These are fine dining prices and the level of service provided was totally unacceptable. It is such a shame. In the end we decided it felt more like a Pizza Express but the Pizza Express usually has much better service.