Swithins

A good place to go but… having booked a table at 7 PM I was only offered what shows as the Evening Menu, not the Fish one which I was looking forward to tasting – this was a big disappointment to me. When looking at the Fish Menu on Swithins web site there is no notice of this being unavailable at nights…

Sill I had gravadlax salmon as a starter (great dill mayo served with it), raviolli (stuffing was very good) and tiramisu that, to my opinion, lacked some alcohol on the genoise / biscuits but tasted good.

My friends and I went to Swithins restaurant last night in search of a good atmosphere, food, service and value for money.

Unfortuantely, what we found was the most unattentive waiter I have ever had the displeasure of coming across, taking over half an hour to serve us water once we had been seated.

With only 3 tables in the restaurant being used, it amazed us all to think they were so casual about their ‘service’ and shocked us to think back to the other positive reviews we had read which made us go there in the first place.

The starters were ok but also took about 40 minutes to produce and when we had eventally received our main meals – about an hour later, the chicken came out rare in the middle. Although the portion sizes were good, I certainly would not go back for more. Quantity was the order of the day and not quality or service – having to wait to have our empty plates taken from infront of us for at least half an hour.

Overall, a bad experience in a very quiet room, with no atmostphere, no service and slow drinks.
I would not go back.

My boyfriend and I came here for our anniversary dinner – which I mentioned when I booked in the naive belief that they might give us a more romantic table rather than the one right by the kitchen door that we ended up with.

Swithins doesn't have a great website, and what they don't tell you is that in the evening only one of the restaurant areas is open, so the menu is mixed seafood/Italian. This actually works quite well as there is lots of seafood/fish choice and it offers other options for those who aren't too keen on seafood. My boyfriend, for example, had ravioli to start and lamb cutlets for his main. I had beef carpacio to start and scallops as my main.

The food was good – but not amazing. The carpaccio was quite thickly sliced and the salad accompanying it was plentiful – so there was a good portion size and it was enjoyable but, as I say, not mind blowing. My scallops were good but half way through I got a whiff of something which immediately put me off. I hasten to add that nothing was wrong with it but the scallops were huge, the bacon around them was tough and fatty and the mash potato looked and tasted more like puree. Like I said – not amazing.

The wine list is very good – offering a good range of prices to cater for varying budgets, we chose a £17.95 bottle of Semillon Chardonnay and it was delicious, nicer than I had expected it to be. It drank really well with our food as well.

The desserts menu didn't offer that much choice – almost everything seemed to have cream in it, or chocolate, so we didn't have a dessert in the end but we did choose a glass of Muscat to top the evening off. I am a huge fan of the Muscat grape having grown up in the South of France and this was incredibly nice Muscat.

The service was good, with a smile and a sense of humour which was pleasant – we were not unncessarily interrupted but it would have been nicer to have a slightly quieter table to enjoy our romantic evening together.

Something else they don't tell you is that they charge a ‘cover charge’ of £1.50 per person. I don't mind, but that is on top of the ‘optional’ 12.5% service charge (I would always pay a tip but 12.5% is the steep end of service charge and I prefer to decide myself how much the service was worth) and the TasteLondon card we had was supposed to give us a 50% off food discount but we didn't get the entire discount deducted from our bill. We didn't mention it or argue the point. Without the discount the bill came to £103 including service and wine, for which I personally feel is not justified given the quality of the meal. I probably won't be coming back to Swithins but I would definitely recommend it for very good wine with a meal and with a group of friends. I would also suggest going with a discount card in hand.