Lennard's review of Launceston Place

I was visiting in the UK and had read up on various restaurants. I was excited and intrigued by this restaurant.
My overall impression was that I liked the food well enough, but that there was not that much in realm of excellence for me to return. The first problem for me was the room itself…an oddly shaped part of the restaurant that narrows into a triangle in the back. It was a cramped and not very nice space interrupted in the middle by a door to the kitchen. The wait staff masses at this door to coordinate the servings…so if you sit near it, as we did, you will experience a constant grouping and regrouping of the staff right next to you. Then the table I sat at was permanently angled so that one had the feeling of being off center. This topped by the fact that a very redolent cheese cart sat directly behind me wafting strong smells over to my table.
The waitress and sommelier were very helpful, but the bus person was awkward and seemed to be untrained.
A series of service blips led to a lack of ease all around. There were longer waits for courses than were necessary, and the staff seemed unaware of a note made during an online reservation that one of the party was not able to eat dairy. This resulted in a less than complete menu for that person, and an arbitrary decision to make a fruit plate for desert, a sad culmination to a full meal. When asked to provide olive oil instead of butter, the confused bus person produced grape seed oil. When this was sent back owing to its rather pungent flavor, the staff informed us that the chef didn't like olive oil and didn't have any in the kitchen.

Onto the food. An initial amuse bouche of hot leek soup topped with with cold leek soup was rich, tasty and smooth, The scallops appetizer presented had a tasty sauce but were just ordinary in flavor. The 'deviiled" sardines, described as packing a punch with mustard, etc., were only mildly flavorful and seemed to retain their bones despite my own skillful removal of spines. The mains included a hallibut billed as “smoked.” The waiter explained that the fish was covered with a ceramic pot when it was cooked over a fire, but it didn't taste smoked. The high point was the suckling pig, very tasty and creatively presented. A predesert of lemon sorbet dropped in a raspberry mousse with a crisp freestanding crust liberally sprinkled with black pepper was tasty and inventive. Why couldn't all the dishes have this kind of inventive verve?
The dessert (after some begging the kitchen substituted a lemon sorbet for the fruit plate) was a strange chocolate confection—a semi melted dark chocolate topped with something that looked and tasted like chocolate cookie crumbs and topped with a grated ice cream of almonds and salt. The whole thing placed in a seashell (for no known reason). It wasn't a very elegant dish, and didn't have much to recommend it. The Valhona chocolate was of course excellent—but how many times have we seen Valhona chocolate in this type of restaurant before?
In all, the experience was a bit exasperating from the service perspective (although everyone was personally very nice and helpful) and from the food perspective it was fairly uninspiring with the exception of the suckling pig.