Junglefresh.'s Reviews

I really enjoyed my first taste of this friendly, light, unpretentious local restaurant. This is not haute cuisine, it is rather “honest cooking” with decent wine available. We asled our waitress about the wine choice to discover that her recommendation was spot-on which is not all that usual. Our waitress was friendly, enthusiastic and clearly loved to work there. The food was good, and matched expectations, though my sliced steak was not particularly memorable. I know my wife enjoyed her fish, but this was more of an overall experience than a foodie paradise. The lady who seemed to own the place took the trouble to come round and ask for views. suggestions and criticism. She engaged with us in a non-defensive and open-minded way, taking in all that we had to say. We wiill be returning soon. This is a valuable and welcome addition to the local dining choice and my wife and I left feeling appreciated as customers and really very happy with our evening and overall experience.

I cannot opine on value for money – I was taken here to lunch. First the good news: the Spanish sommelier was an enthusiast who really knew how to tune into what wine we liked and made an excellent recommendation. Thank you. The ambience is all black lacquer with touches of crimson – felt smart and oriental, and I liked the raised tables and banquettes too. Here's the rub: this is a much hyped place to come to eat and I was expecting quite a lot from the experience. My host and I opted for the prix fixe £30 lunchtime menu. As this was a menu that was presented to us, I hoped it would be a chance to taste the cuisine without crippling my host (who I think made up for that on the delicious wines ordered). The starter was fine, I thought, though less than a week later I have diificulty in recalling it. The main course I chose was chicken sliced over vegetables and lentils (I think they were lentils !). The chicken was RAW and served as such in spite of being sliced ! Well, sometimes things go wrong and I didn't want to be horrid, so I apologised but asked for it to be cooked through… when the Maitre D' brought it back to me he said words along the lines of: “The chef has now cooked it through but asked me to point out to you that it is our recipe to serve the chicken under-done”. What does that say for arrogance and lack of respect for the customer, how stupid do they think their customers are ? I have to say that I would have had words – rather than laughed and suggested they should read-up on Salmonella, but I was a guest, and I lunch with my host is not a frequent event, I did not wish to cause him any embarrasment and we had serious bonding to achieve, so I let it go. Actually, the food was wonderfully seasoned and tasted just right. We had a good time and we achieved what we needed to. However, Joel, please come in sometime to give the chef and Maitre who represent you in your establishment a real good kicking. Don't take your customers for ignorant fools and don't serve… More

My wife and I shared three meals here, Friday night dinner and two breakfasts.
The refurbishment of the fabric of the building has worked very well indeed (we liked our room too, for that reason), there is bare brick and there is exposed wood, but there is also a likeable openness and vibrancy about the place which is pleasing. By comparison with London, the food prices are very fair though the margin on the wines offered must (in my view) be large – which is not to decry the wines, rather the prices at which they are sold. We had a beetroot carpacio which my wife enjoyed, though she found it slightly sweeter than she would have preferred, followed by a risotto which she really did enjoy. I had started to wonder when our food would come after we'd been sitting for 45 minutes, at which point the two starters arrived with the explanation that the chef did not like the seared tuna nicoise he had first produced (as he felt he had overdone the tuna) and had started again, hence the delay plus apologies. It was worth the wait, as the version produced to me at the table was just right, both in cooking and flavour. Well done, chef ! The Tuna was was not only perfectly seared, but the portion was generous. This was followed in my case by a delicious piece of haddock, fresh and neither too small nor too generous, in the most delicicously light batter. The chunky chips were SUPER, crunchy outside, soft and melt in your mouth inside.
Where this restaurant, like the Hotel, lets itself down is attention to detail. In the hotel, that meant me reporting a non-funtioning blind and that receiving no atendion at all, an the towels in the bathroom being badly (BADLY) frayed. In the restaurant, both breakfasts were horribly understaffed, which led to tables being left dirty and unmade for new guests, unacceptable waits and every single cup I saw coming out of the washer with coffee grounds visible inside. The buffet was really quite sad -and expensive – so we gave that a miss. My wife asked for… More

First of all: the ice-cream is great and the quality unchanged since I first started trying it when there was a Marine Ices outlet near Child's Hill in the 1960ies (could have been early 70ies).

This is about the food offering in Chalk Farm where my wife and I started taking our kids and their friends on birthdays in the mid-1980ies. Nothing seems to have changed from that date, through our occasional visits thereafter and to today. This is the sort of place that “does what it says on the tin”. The place itself is quite open-plan and there are very few soft furnishings, so while it looks uncluttered the place is loud and a lot of the people look a bit grim. The service is friendly, but not accomplished. The person who served us recently seemed to be learning on the job, but was saved by the fact that see seemed genuinely nice. We were hungry, early evening and neither of us had eaten since breakfast. We ordered the Melanzane to start – that Italian staple. We were both disappointed: no cheese at all, no Parmesan offered either. Just round slices of aubergine, baked in a ragu that looked as though it came from a bottle, with a little oregano. Anyone could have done at least as well at home. My main course of chicken Milanese with salad was much better as the chicken tasted great and the breadcrumb batter was light and cooked in new oil, not old. The accompanying zuchinni fritti were the best thing we ate, though my wife liked her paillard of chicken (in other words what I had minus the crumb batter) pronouncing it moist yet flavoursome. Price was fair, especially the house Sangiovese. So, a good local standby. Not going to wow anyone (in spite of the walls being covered with autographs from “celebs”), not memorable, but food made with what seemed like fresh and good quality ingredients at reasonable value. Won't rush back, but no doubt will go back at some point… when we want a local standby.

Last time my wife and I visited Assaggi, it was winter, dark and calm. This time, the weather in the evening was glorious and the place was HEAVING; it was a challenge to hold a conversation. The bare walls did not help in that regard. The welcome was very warm and I found the over the top familiarity of the person who seemed to be in charge quite amusing – but had I been with people I knew less well, it would have been a different story. In fact, the service was good overall. The food merely correct. I had an enjoyable burratta wrapped with a slice of grilled aubergine – simple and almost impossible to get wrong. My main course was a pasta with crab meat and a side salad. Again, hard to fault but hardly a cullinary challenge. One of our party left half “her” liver, though my wife enjoyed her plain grilled sea bass – again, hardly a challenge (see a pattern emerging here ?). The first decent red on the menu was a Planeta at £38, which must be a heady mark-up… the whites are better value but in my view miss out on some of the better Italian choices (from the North of Italy). We had no desserts and only a couple of mint teas. We were in good company and had a fun evening once the place quietened down a little (in volume). We enjoyed the interaction with the servers but having thought about it quite hard, I am driven to the conclusion that the food was no better than a lot of other Italian restaurants offer (which is, of course good), but at £50 per head (one bottle of one of the house whites, no pre-dinner drinks or bottled water)… sorry, but something's lacking.

When I saw that in this quiet thoroughfare an organic, vegetarian Italian restaurant was planning to open… well I thought that this would be a short-lived venture. Having lunched here on an almost weekly basis since Amico Bio opened, my sincere wish is to be proved utterly wrong.
First, the food is delicious. It is fresh, simply cooked, imaginative, light and just so out of the ordinary; it really is a pleasure to eat. I recently for the first time also tried the wine (I try to go easy during the week…) and I can testify that the organic Sangiovese was quite impressive – especially after about 20 minutes when the bouquet and taste started to open. Second, the service is friendly, knowledgeable and genuinely keen to please. The chef is also clearly very committed to his craft with much of the more exotic ingeredients (sorry to show my lack of veggie credentials, but I had never even heard of “Seitan” before… its colour is pastel green, its consistency reminds me of mushrooms) sourced from the family in Naples. Third, the value for money is exceptional. An old friend (who is quite demanding in terms of food and drink) and I ate what was essentially a three course meal (two “starter” courses and a light “main”) with wine (see above) and service… for well under £30 per head. By the way, the zucchini fritti were, my friend declared, the best he had ever tasted. I say the same for the Arancini…
The drawback has so far been a slight lack of atmosphere which is partly a reflection on the newness of the business, and partly on what I perceive to be prejudice on the part of meat eaters to forego meat – but both my friend and I are meat eaters and we made no sacrifices in satisfaction to eat at this little gem of a place.

I try never to be unkind when posting a review, and mine in based on four visits over approximately 12-14 months. Each time as a guest, so it is obvious the this restaurant has its fans. But I am not one of them, really.
The wine, for me, is the redeeming feature of this place, especially the Meerlust Rubicon which I think is a wonderful wine of its kind, and it is sold here at no higher price than I have seen it listed elsewhere.
I think that this is a worthwhile concept except that the table service has always been disctinctly average (though management seems to be genuinely interested in the clientele having a good experience – but when one is a guest, it is difficult not just politely to grunt approval). The food is where for me this place falls flat, particulalry as it is not cheap. Each time I have eaten here, the food has simply been way behind the wine and struck me as a sort of afterthought in terms of taste, imagination and satisfaction. Not that the food is bad, or inedible, or tasteless; for me it has been just totally forgetable. As though cooked with public schoolboys in mind (those brought up on stew, crumble and custard), who appreciate the alcohol but would not know theire Guinea Fowl from their Ostrich. At the moment, it is the sort of place I am perfectly OK with the idea of being taken to, but would not think of inviting others to. Faint praise, perhaps, but just my opinion with which the reader is free to agree or disagree.

Why am I writing this review ?
Not because this is an existential piece of self examination, but because I disagree with quite a lot that Food Fiend has written – not that I doubt her experience or sincerity but, simply put: my experience and hers are quite different.
I have posted a number of reviews of restaurants my wife and I frequent which are within walking distance of where we live. We used to come to this site for romantic candle-lit dinners when Conrad's Bistro used to be here in the early 1970ies and we were both very young and, basically, penniless. When, a couple of generations later, Retsina opened here, I confess I was not a fan but I have slowly been won over. To the point that my overall opinion is that the food here is incomparably better than, say, Lemonia which is closer to where we live. True, Lemonia has a cracking atmosphere and a congenial setting , but here the food is in my view cooked on a far less industrial scale and with much more care. The results are as similar and cheese and chalk !
I was among a party of six friends of long standing last night. Often we meet up with one or both of our sons here for dinner on Sunday nights. The place was last night, and is normally, full – or nearly so – at 8.30pm when we tend to arrive. It seems obvious that six friends catching-up with each other are likely to enjoy themselves, so the likely success of the evening was always a probability which the food enhanced rather than detracted from. We had a bunch of starters, the usual suspects: humous, tarama, haloumi, pastourman… all these were reliably produced, and tasted as expected. The Chilean Sauvignon blanc and the Argentinian Shiraz Cabernet were reasonably priced and eminently drinkable. How much more can you ask for ?
I normally have chicken souvla, which runs out early because it is slow cooked and SOOOO tender… and not bulk produced (a definite tick in the box). Two people had that last night and enthused ! My wife had the chicken kebab which she… More