Oh dear. Came here for a 12pm booking on a Saturday.
I went to Foxlow Clerkenwell last year and had the most amazing experience; both in terms of food and service. I don't know what has happened to their Soho branch, but they need to remedy it.
First of all; service. A coffee was placed on our table as soon as we sat down; we hadn't ordered one. Ok, mistakes happen, it's fine. Regrettably it was symptomatic of a way the place is run.
it took us a long while to attract anyone's attention, despite the restaurant being mostly empty downstairs where we we seated. Once we did, the server said we couldn't order from the lunch menu, because they only started serving that at 5pm! Eventually she came back having confirmed that we couldn't order breakfast, but we could have food from the brunch and lunch menu.
As we had had the perfect burger in Clerkenwell, my other half and I ordered it again, medium rare, and salivated at the prospect.
Imagine our disappoint to receive a rock hard, well done burger. Everything else was ok, and the fries were fresh. I had ordered a side order of kimchi which was delicious.
When I sent the burger back, I was told by the manager that they could only cook it well done, as they didn't grind their own meat, and they didn't have a licence to serve it any other way. I said that if we had been told that (it's a recurrent issue in England), we simply wouldn't have ordered it. I then asked for some fried chicken instead, which was brought to the table in an alarmingly rapid five minutes. Sadly the kitchen in that short time had still managed to deliver a dry and overcooked meal.
To give the manager credit, it was good service recovery, but the negatives are just too many.
Badly trained and ill-informed staff, and a poor product. It seems that they pre-cook the food and then warm it up, which is not what I would expect from the Hawksmoor chain.
We are never coming back. read more