Smiths of Smithfield

Went to Smithfields for a birthday lunch with a group. While the space and atmosphere is great and the service fine our meal was decidedly average. The portions small and the tastes and flavours of our dishes just did not seem to work.

I had the scallops with black pudding and courgette fritters as a main – I got three small scallops and the fritters were soft and tasted uncooked. One of our party had the ribs which were tasty – if a little overdone, as was the quail.

If we had stopped at mains I think the experience would have been written off as ok but we all went for puddings and these were far below average. The trifle had a base of hard something at the bottom – a strange texture – certainly not sponge. The seasonal fruit pavlova came with a grey sludge that was so tart it couldn't be eaten and what we thought was a poached pear was more like a bitter pickle. The cheese board tasted like it had been sourced with cheese from Sainsbury.

Thankfully when challenged the manager agreed the trifle sponge was wrong, the cheese was cold and he tried to tell us… More

Great space, attentive but relaxed service. Wonderful pea soup, but tuna sashimi disappointingly stringy. I think of Smiths for steak, but my wife adored her sea bass (and she's picky about her sea bass) while the rest of the table had excellent steaks and vegetables. For pud the seasonal tart had rather strange pasty, but the berries and waffles were a delight and the creme brulee properly made. Carafe wines provide a good value offering, but £70 a head all up for this Sunday lunch is still a bit toppy in my book.

There can be few more pleasurable ways to spend a leisurely summer Sunday lunch, than on the balcony of the top floor of Smiths of Smithfield.

It was a beautiful day and the ability to sit outside under the awnings provided a very relaxed and enjoyable location for lunch. The food was excellent. I am not sure what has been happening recently in the kitchens there but, on this occasion, the food was much better than we have enjoyed on previous visits. My eggs benedict to start with was very well presented and the egg poached to perfection. My friends had the smoked eel and the calamari as their starters and similar comments of satisfaction were expressed.

A very good bottle of Gigondas, sensibly priced, accompanied our meal.

For the main course I thoroughly enjoyed my roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, my friends had the roast lamb and the lobster. The meal and the accompanying vegetables were will cooked and seasoned, with no evidence of the ‘over seasoning’ that can sometimes happen at Smiths of Smithfield.

I declined the desert but I gather, from the… More

I love watching Masterchef, but I fear John Torode is appearing in the wrong cookery program. He might be better suited to appear as a victim in an episode of Gordon Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares. It would be great to see Gordon in action here, saving SOS from any further decline.

We had an early table, it was busy and atmosphere was buzzy. You go to SOS for a good steak – you would hope that being located in Smithfield Meat Market, this would be the case. No starters, just looking forward to a really well cooked steak and chips. The food arrived incredibly fast, which always worries me. The waiter presented us with our food which looked pretty appetizing along with a small pot of bernaise sauce and promptly turned on his heel and left the table. Is it just me, or is it reasonably standard to be asked if we would like any other other condiments to accompany a steak? Hoping he would return and without disrupting the flow of conversation with my friend, I waited for him to return. He didn't.

The steak was very average, too grey, chewy and not really of great… More

I dined at the Top Floor restaurant with a party of six on a busy Friday night service. The dining room is noisy and it was hard to hold a normal conversation above the invasive din. Service was very slow, with dishes taking a long time to come out of the kitchen (over 15 minutes for the starters).

They had run out of squid by 9.30pm, so their popular starter of salted squid was unavailable. We were only told about this when it came to ordering, so half the table had to choose another starter at the last minute.

I opted for the Dorset crab on toast as a starter. One third of the toast was burnt, literally black, and turned upside down in the hope that I wouldn't notice, as if the chef thought I had no taste buds. It only led to an unpleasant shock when I took a bite to discover the taste of bitter, charred toast, which ruined any flavour the crab might have had.

For a main I chose the Hereford rump, pan-fried with a béarnaise sauce. The steak was perfectly cooked (medium rare, as it should be) and flavoursome. The chunky chips were nice too. The béarnaise… More