I had a very disappointing experience at Locanda Locatelli last night. I first went a couple of years ago and rated it as one of my best ever meals out, however yessterday was a big let down, reflecting some of the other recent reviews. Firstly, the service was very poor – after fifteen minutes of sitting at our table I had to call a waiter over in order to ask if we could have an apperitif, not something you'd expect from a restaurant I used to consider one of the best in London. It then took over an hour from sitting down to getting our first course. We hadn't ordered anything unusual, and the restaurant was only half full (we had a relatively early sitting), so I can see no reason for this delay. We had been told on booking that we would have the table from 7.15pm to 9.15pm and by almost 9pm we were only on our second of four courses, through no fault of our own. The waiter said we could stay longer, but completely missed the point that it shouldn't take the best part of 2 hours to get 2 starter courses – at that rate it would have become a 4 hour dinner! After asking them to speed up, service became very surly, with food banged down in front of us and silence from the staff. The quality of the food was very mediochre compared to last time – the pasta was great, however the pre-pasta starter and the mains were more worthy of an italian chain restaurant and the beef (at £31 for the main course) was bland – I had a better tasting steak from Sainsbury's recently! The only saving grace was the sommelier – we asked him to select a different glass of wine for each course and he chose some excellent, unusual wines that were very memorable. Overall I left with the impression that my first experience here was when the restaurant was making a name for itself, but now it is resting on its laurels. If you want average quality Italian food I suggest going to Strada for a quarter of the price.