My Place Beckenham

The restaurant has been refurbished to a high standard, however there is no atmosphere what so ever we were the only four people have lunch inside for most of the time then another table of two. The waitresses were very nice I ordered a salad to start was served without dressing, then Duck which was very over cooked ? My husband enjoyed his meal, my son and his wife said have had better.

 

My wife and I have previously been regular if not frequent patrons of La Rascasse on account of its proximity and generally good record for interesting and well prepared food, especially fish and shellfish. This evening was an unmitigated disappointment however. My wife asked for water and a fruit juice so there shouldn't have been a problem with this but it took an age to arrive and she struggled to get a decent quantity of ice. I ordered a dry martini cocktail but it was immediately obvious that the barman hadn't a clue what I was talking about nor what the ingredients were, so I told him. After a 20 minute wait I was presented with a tumbler of lukewarm dry martini. When I complained the waitress, who was friendly enough, offered to fix a proper dry martini cocktail which she did, but only after another 15 minute wait. The cocktail when it arrived, was average and in any event the first course had arrived which I wanted to eat with wine, not spirits. For starters I had whelks, which since these were served simply boiled on a bed of ice and with a variety of mayonnaise accompaniments there wasn't much the restaurant could do to screw this up. My wife had a kind of fish roulade with herbs which would have been pleasant enough if it had not been so clearly reheated before being served. We then had a further delay of about 25 minutes to half an hour waiting for our main course whilst the waitress spent the time discussing party arrangements for a group of young women who had come into the restaurant during service to arrange this event. Not only should this have been undertaken outside service hours for lunch or dinner, but these young women had also brought their young children in large baby buggies which blocked the access to the lavatories, talked in very loud and disturbing voices which clearly unsettled and elderly lady patron, and caused an unacceptable delay in service for both us and the other customers. We decided to opt for the dover sole which was advertised as accompanied by a white chocolate sauce which we thought was very unusual but decided to be adventurous and give it try. This was a big mistake. I can authoritatively say that chocolate and dover sole do not go well together. Following this we decided to cut our losses and, quite literally run for the exit.