Went to Baretto with a friend on a Friday night, relatively late around 10pm. I was positively surprised how busy the place was. The atmosphere was good, although it's a shame the venue is in the basement. We sat down and were first ignored for about 10 mins, then we ordered two beers and got the menus. 15 minutes later, still no beers. Dozens of staff were running around like headless chicken and we asked several of them to check for the beers without any luck. After I almost went to the bar myself (where they had been standing for a while) we finally received them.

We then ordered our starters and mains. Another 20 minutes later my friend got his starter. I was not so lucky and had to wait another 15 minutes for mine, after which I got fed up and cancelled it. At all times, several waiters were running around, different ones asking us whether we were ready to order (we had ordered a long time ago…) and promising us to check on our order, all rather farcical.

The mains eventually arrived, I had a pizza and my friend pasta. I must say the food tasted very good once it finally arrived. The pizza was top notch from a wood-fire oven and my friend's pasta was also very good. We didn't have time to order dessert as by now we had been sitting there for nearly 2 hours.

Overall, value for money at Baretto is pretty poor. If I have to pay £12(!) for a Caprese Salad (NB that's a starter portion) then I not only want extremely good quality but also service that it absolutely spot on. Maybe they were still in “opening mode” and getting to grips with the staff, but overall we were not impressed. I'm not sure where the £42 average price per head comes from on SM as we certainly didn't get away with that. And that was for pizza/pasta without wine. The Secondi were well beyond in terms of price.