lsq2 Bar and Brasserie - Reading

Cornilia Wardren-Smith (10 September 2007)

I completely disagree and you must have bland taste buds. The soufflé is just amazing, it really hits the spot. I have dined there with my family many times now over the four years it has been open, and have always been extremely impressed with the standard of food. I am no stranger to fine dining, we regularly eat out in top quality London restaurants and Lsq2 is a worthy match for any of them. Keep up the good work!

Michelle N (9 September 2007)

Read about lsq2 in the local paper and decided to try it as we were taking some colleagues to dinner. My husband works in Green Park and often has to entertain colleagues from overseas so we were hoping to find lsq2 would be somewhere we could take guests with the assurance that they would have a good meal. The setting was attractive and the decor pleasant-although for a Saturday night it wasn't very full - possibly because it was a bit out of the way in Green Park. The service was good and the staff attentive but the food was very disappointing. My starter of butternut in a wonton looked impressive but was bland and tasteless. My husband had watercress and asparagus soup which he said was full of asparagus fibres and he could not taste the watercress at all. He had oysters as well which he said were good and well presented. For our mains I ordered the rib eye steak and he had ordered the fillet. The kitchen seemed to have mixed up our orders as I had requested medium to well done and my husband had requested rare and both our steaks were the opposite of what we had requested. My Béarnaise sauce was cold and my steak was so sinewy that I was unable to eat it because I could not risk having to remove bits from my mouth in front of our guests. Our guests did say their carpetbagger steaks were delicious although I suspect they would have said that regardless. They did look a lot better than ours though. For dessert I had ordered the toblerone soufflé which was beautifully presented but only tasted of egg white - I could not taste the toblerone at all. Our guests ordered the petits fours which were four tiny items on a plate (slightly bigger than a thumb nail). We had then ordered Kahlua coffees only to find they didn't have Kahlua. All in all we would say the setting, service and presentation were very good but the standard of the food was not worth the £270 we had paid. Essentially everything that sounded and looked delicious failed to deliver on taste. The Lsq2 chefs will really have to raise their game if they want diners to keep coming back.