Grenville's review of Skylon Restaurant

Having been badly let down by Bel Canto who could not find enough opera singers in order to open and it being my wife's birthday i managed to get a last minute table at Skylon. Luck favouring a birthday-girl, we got a suddenly vacant front row table overlooking the embankment and over the Thames, The view was breathtakingly beautiful and must be the most romantic of any restaurant in London.
The restaurant itself is at one end of a vast open-plan room the other bit of the room being the brasserie section. We had table cloths the brasserie didn't. The noise level was tremendous, never experienced anything like it.
The first noticable thing was the utter charm of the staff, never in Britain have I been served by such people and for one moment I thought that they had all been trained by the Chedi Hotel in Muscat, totally amazing.
The starters were perfectly good, the main courses were turbot which was delicious and only ruined by being served with bacon and boiled broccoli. The other main was duck leg and breast which was good but was served with what appeared to be a creamy rice pudding with a weird taste – why?

Suddenly the people on the next table saw a mouse running across the floor heading towards another table, there was a lot of screaming by the women and laughter by the men. The very suave maitre d' at once came over and apologised.

Next came dessert which was a honey thing with iced cream, also we ordered crepes with raspberry sauce, it was perfecly good, cooked in front of us but in truth was pedestrian in taste, somehow it lacked any ‘bottom’ taste whatsoever.
When asked how i enjoyed the desserts I told the waiter that they were pretty much rubbish, at first he thought I was joking.

The wine list has lots by the glass and it is to their credit that when you order a 175ml glass of wine for £8 the same wine appears later in the list at £32.

The staff get the tips here, not the management who are on salaries.

All in all a mixed experience but the staff, the view along with the mouse cabaret made up for the questionable composition of the dishes. I will probably not bother to go again.