Www.bycost­ello­⁠.com's review of Theo Randall at the InterContinental Hotel

Having booked short notice the day before I was a little wary on how good Theo Randal’s could be, so went with managed expectations and good job I did!

The food on the whole was more hearty Italian than top end dining. For antipasti I had smoked eel salad, which was a nice meat flavour with subtle hints of smoke, very good. Then for Primi, I had slow cook Veal tagliatelle with summer truffle; the truffle a tasteless waste of time and the pasta was a little too dry and could of benefited with some sauce. Then for main I had the Monk fish and prosciutto, which was good especially the ham.

Where the wheels came off however was the service, it was a good half an hour before we were asked for our orders, and it didn’t occur to them to offer aperitifs, despite having some Archers and Prosecco thing on the top of their menu. Anyway, we ordered our food and aperitifs. A good half hour went by, and we asked again for aperitifs. About forty minutes after ordering the antipasti arrived, and about half way though that the aperitifs arrived. Once the plates were cleared we waited about another forty minuets for the Primi course to arrive, similarly about another forty minutes from those plates being cleared we finally got our mains.

By this point they picked up on our disgruntled body language and various people started to appear to apologise for the poor service. One told us that they were very busy that night, as they had a private function on too; but I am sorry get more staff, we are all paying for an evening out and why should my evening suffer?

They did however offer free pudding to make up for the lax service and long waits, but as we were keen to get off as it was quite late we politely declined. Only to be presented on our exit with a take out box with a couple of deserts in there! (Chocolate mouse cake, very moist and very yum, and a sharp lemon tart which was also yum and in fact these were the best food of the whole evening).

So whilst the food on the whole was good, it wasn’t really up to the standard I’d of thought a restaurant of this class could or would produce, but the wholly inexcusable service means if I want posh Italian food, I’ll go back to L’Anima!