Thackeray's

Distained (6 March 2009)

Well I am glad that I looked at the other reviews before reading this last one. I held a business meeting at lunch in Thackeray’s. Three courses for three people came to a very reasonable £150.00 including the drinks. My starter of seared scallops was excellent and I have not seen any so large in any restaurant before. I had the lamb as the main, which was cooked and flavoured perfectly and for dessert we had the three-chocolate creation, can’t remember the name sadly, but it was stunning; my wife had this as well and was delighted. The setting was perfect and the members of staff were informative. I am not that fussed about hearing where the ingredients were sourced but I can understand that seeing as they are proud of using local produce they want to boast about it. To the previous reviewer, if you are satisfied eating at Burger King, perhaps this was not the right place for you.

B Everitt (22 February 2009)

I think it takes a certain type of person to enjoy the experience at Thackeray's. If you're someone whose pleasure in a meal is derived primarily from the ceremony surrounding the event, then I can just about see that you might think this is somewhere special, even then I'd struggle to enjoy at that level. If, however, you actually like to go out for a meal to enjoy good food and the opportunity to enjoy the company of your fellow diners, then I cannot recommend this place to anyone. In a nutshell - this is a ridiculously over-priced attempt at haute cuisine gone terribly wrong. The menu reflects a naive attempt to replicate the now dead and buried 'Modern European' taster-style experience; replete with foams, mousses, carpaccios, etc that are attempts to embellish poorly executed cooking with the illusion of technical wizardry. My partner's face dropped when our first courses arrived, and oblong trays were placed in front of us which had more bits of glass and peculiar ceramic ramekins on than any actual food. My starter of seared scallops for £13 was stewed not seared; I was supposed to be pleasantly distracted from this disaster by some bizarre and insipid apple jus that had no place on the plate. My partner's smoked salmon had been pureed into a milkshake, sprinkled with cocoa and presented as a 'cappuccino' - which, if they were to serve in Starbucks would ensure that they were immediately shut down by trading standards. My £27 venison main course had virtually no venison to speak of, and some burnt lardons covered with mysterious white foam; presumably an attempt to distract me from my vain search for the 'locally sourced' (sic) meat that had been promised by the menu. My partner's course of red mullet for £25 was overcooked, a tiny portion, and drizzled with foam and jus galore, but lacked any actual flavour. This is only a brief summary of the meal - we were eating with two other people whose meals failed to elicit any wowed responses.

Added to this was the miserably executed service. The waiters and bar members of staff were evidently briefed to present the illusion of being from the Claridge’s school of silver service, but were, in fact, just intrusive, showed poor judgement and empathy for their diners needs, and really didn't know what they were talking about. At every stage of the meal we were interrupted to have the irrelevant intricacies of our bland food explained to us by rote. The bar staff had extreme difficulty accepting and complying with my request for a simple bottle of lager - it took 10 minutes to talk them out of trying to serve me a Brooklyn bitter, or a trappist Framboise ale. We were even made to halt our conversation at the end of the meal, so that the young man serving us could explain in endless detail, the constituent ingredients of the ridiculous petit fours put in front of us, that failed to fill the hole left by the abject lack of any discernible food or nourishment that might have preceded them. So adamant was he to explain all this, that he completely overlooked our desire to enjoy our evening and each other's conversation - his soliloquy became a rather surreal excursion in to the absurd, as he rabbited on to himself with no apparent awareness of our total lack of interest in anything he was saying. After a thoroughly miserable experience, I was astonished to discover that for four starters, four mains, two desserts and one bottle of wine, and a couple of aperitifs, the bill weighed in at £320 - absolutely ridiculous. I can only say I was relieved I had had a big lunch, because otherwise it would have been a trip to Burger King on the way home. To summarise, if it were an alternative between eating at Thackeray's again, or paying a parking fine, I'd go for the latter. At least I wouldn't come away feeling like I'd got ripped off quite so badly, nor would I be a fraction as annoyed as I was when I left that place.

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