Texture

Best value set lunch in town - great food, great service, great ambience and totally consistent - it's my go to show the love restaurant.

Serene atmosphere, charming service, marvellous food.

Fabulous food and wine. Varied and different menu. Staff very attentative. Great atmosphere.

We had the fish tasting menu and it was very good. Good variation between courses and they were more than just a taste. The staff were knowledgeable and very friendly. Some might find it a little off putting because there were a lot of staff and it seemed that there was always someone attending the table. However, all the staff were so pleasant that it added to the evening. The wine made it a very expensive night with limited selections under £60 a bottle it is not a night for the faint-hearted wine lover. The atmosphere could have been better but I would recommend this restaurant. Just be prepared for the bill!

Expectations inevitably run high whenever it’s a special evening out, you’re dining at a Michelin-starred restaurant and, you’re opting for the tasting menu – which ought to show the chef’s expertise at its best. Nonetheless, a recent evening out at Texture saw both my dining comrade and I highly satisfied by the overall experience. We had visited the restaurant once previously together just after it had opened and were slightly underwhelmed on that occasion, feeling in particular that the place lacked in either atmosphere or innovation. Five years on and having heard good things recently, we ventured back and were not disappointed; broadly, Texture seems now to have hit its stride, knows what it is good and excels in this respect. Prior to dinning we enjoyed a bottle of champagne in the bar adjacent to the restaurant. Our server very helpfully and knowledgeably talked us through the extensive list of champagnes (perhaps the largest in London) and we eventually settled on a superb bottle of Drappier. We appreciated the fact that we were bought four separate snack options to alleviate our peckishness while drinking: two of these were specially prepared for my vegetarian comrade, and two for my more omnivorous palate. In our experience, not all comparable restaurants are so assiduous in this respect. We were also impressed by the things Texture could do with popcorn – in a bacon-flavoured version (obviously for me), one could almost taste the sizzling rashers. Onto the dining, and we were ushered into a beautiful – and mostly full – room, characterised by its high ceiling with ornate cornicing and discrete examples of modern art on the wall. Texture characterises its cooking style as ‘modern European with a Scandinavian twist’ and we were both delighted with the relative originality of the tasting menus with which we were presented. From my perspective, it was a delight not to see the almost obligatory scallop dish at the start of the menu and the similarly almost obligatory slab of beef as the main highlight. Instead, I marvelled at the delicacy of my wood pigeon (certainly the stand-out dish for me) and also the intensity of the venison steak, served in an unctuous chocolate sauce. In general terms, the chefs at Texture seem to prefer flavour intensity of the underlying substance with which they are working over the unnecessary adornment of dishes with superfluous ingredients. The formula certainly worked for us. My comrade also praised her food, but could not help feeling slightly disappointed with her primary dish being ‘cauliflower textures.’ Cauliflower, sadly, is not the most interesting of vegetables, and with regard to this vegetarian dish – and a number of the others – there seemed to be a discernible lack of starch. Despite this quibble, we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves, certainly helped by the paired wines (different for me and my comrade). The whole experience does not come cheap, but is definitely worth it, with Texture ranking among the best high-end recent meals we have sampled.

Being a spoilt foodie, it is rare that I depart a restaurant nowadays waxing lyrical, but this is possibly the best meal I have had in recent memory. From the starter the petit fours, there were “mmms” and “delicious” muttered all over the table. It is genuinely what I would describe as exquisite. Not a word I apply often. The only downside is that it does feel very “business” and I wonder if it would be relaxed enough for a date or a group of friends. And of course, the prices match the extremely high level of cooking. You won't eat for less than £100 a head, but it's sooooo worth it.

First impressions at Texture were pretty great: friendly and attentive staff at the front bar dished out drinks as we arrived in dribs and drabs and delivered the best popcorn nibbles I've ever had in my life. Then we were shown through to the dining room with its high ceilings and minimalist art beautifully blending tradition with modernity, to our table near the semi-open kitchen. We all agreed on the tasting menu, despite the £79 price tag, to get the full experience, with 2 of us also swallowing £49 for matched wines. Unfortunately, that's just about where memory fails me. Whilst we all agreed that the chef had certainly fulfilled his ambition of turning out interesting food without all the heavy butter it just lacked the oomph it needed to be a really special meal. We started off impressed by how closely the chef stuck with the eponymous texture mission with a mint pea soup thing with some granita other thing; then I've got vague memories of asparagus and sweetcorn which came as both bits and a puree. But then the next thing I remember (for the wrong reasons) was a bland sliver of beef which didn't really live up to all the US prime grain-fed blurb and of which the best part was the one bowl of triple cooked chips to share. And the rest is just not very memorable. Add to that, the acoustics are terrible: I could barely hear my companions above the hubbub and I couldn't hear the waiters at all which was particularly frustrating as they insisted on interrupting our meal with explanations of the food and wine (delivered as seriously as a Shakespearian soliloquy) which we nodded along with, deafly but dutifully, for 12 wasted and unwanted interruptions. The more senior staff were smiley but I felt it lacked any real joy overall. Yes it's cool, modern, unpretentious, unfussy, unusual and light but for me the best bit was the goody bag of macaroons to take home (yum). If I could spend my £150 again I'd be going back to revel in the exuberance of Heston's meat fruit. Or somewhere with carpet and lard.

This is an excellent restaurant: food, wine and service are all superb. It is also rather a pleasant environment to be in, one feels exclusively pampered, if I may put it this way. I do not think that I need to carry on: Square Meal write-up is fairly accurate. The only problem is price, most particularly that of wine. My two-course dinner for two, including a bottle of a non-exclusive wine, armagnac and a glass of a dessert wine topped 170 pounds. That is a lot of money in anyone's language…

Great food with a focus on fish (it's nordic after all so you would expect) but not a fish only place. Good service

It could have been because I wasn't wearing my Louboutins, but from the moment I arrived at Texture until I left I felt almost invisible. There was no greeting on arrival and we were left standing at the bar wondering should we wait until shown to a table or take a seat for a pre drinks. We initiated the conversation with the bar man who said we could take a seat where we wanted in the bar. No drink menu on table, we had to get one from the bar. The appearance of pop corn and greasy homemade crisps I thought strange for a michelin star restaurant. We had an 8.30 booking but were shown to our table almost one hour later, hidden in a corner where we could see all but be seen by none. The service was very robotic and awkward. Twice we were left with empty glasses and even told that we had no wine left only for the Sommelier to suddenly arrive with our still half bottle of wine. It was a £35 bottle of Spanish badia but tasted like cheap plonk. My partner had advised them in advance it was my birthday hoping they would make a special effort, they stuck a candle in my desert! Most strange of all the chef spent huge amounts of time with every other table in the room but totally ignored us. What these restaurants need to remember is that one mans money is as good as the next and when they are charging exorbitant prices they need to provide a service that matches the food which incidentally was good but not the best I have eaten.