Okay, you are NOT going to even like (let alone love) this place unless you (i) habitually dress in black; (ii) identify closely with WAGs, wannabes and poseurs; and (iii) think you are the dog's dangly bits.
£125 got us two starters, two main courses, no drinks other than one bottle of £29.50 wine, and a 10% service charge. Frankly, if I'd only been asked to pay half this I would have still felt that it was poor value for money.
Starters are nothing out of the ordinary and criminally small in quantity; main courses are just criminally expensive, with every side dish an extra, even the chips. The Argentinean steaks are unquestionably good but not so much better than Scotland's best as to merit the energy-sapping hike to get to the restaurant.
"What 'hike'?", I can just imagine you saying. Well the Gaucho has no parking as it is on the Thames towpath, about a 200m walk from Richmond Bridge where there are no public parking facilities so you need to use a car park and then walk some more. There are, in fact, six car parks which are all a 15 minute walk (approx 1km) from the restaurant but, of these, one only opens on a Saturday, one closes at 18:30hrs and one won't allow anything longer than a two hour stay - so, assuming you're prepared to walk for 30 minutes (i.e. there and back) for a hugely over-priced, lacklustre meal surrounded by a misbegotten collection of braying poseurs, you'll need to research your car parking options very carefully before you set off.
Assuming you're still up for it and thinking of a night visit, take a torch - you need it (i) to feel safe on the poorly-lit towpath (a Taser, Mace and Whistle might be reassuring too); (ii) to read the menu; and, (iii) to see what you're doing in the dismally dark toilets.
Oddly, despite there seemingly being more staff (all slim and oh so chic) than there are diners, actual service is hit-and-miss apart from the bar staff who are simply abysmal as evidenced by the fact that we sat right beside the bar for eleven minutes before any one of them even deigned to address us.
Our "Reservation" proved something of a joke. We were finally seated 25 minutes after our reservation, and finally served some bread 35 minutes after that. Then, everything suddenly moved like greased lightning, and just under 90 minutes later and £125 poorer, we were done. 'Done' being the operative word here.
Gaucho, in my opinion, is yet another example of The Emperor's New Clothes. Everyone who considers themselves 'in' describes the place in glowing terms and to dissent is to invite personal ridicule. But the fact is that that I'm not even sure I'd want to return as someone's guest or even for a free meal on the house. Marks out of 10: 4. But this presupposes that a something cataclysmic has wiped out all the other restaurants within 50 miles, because any one of them offering a meal for two for £50 is all but guaranteed to be a zillion times better. Marks out of 10 assuming no cataclysm: 1 if I'm generous, 0 if I'm honest.
P.S. For footballers: Gaucho is your sort of tacky place - There are many wines priced at over £250 a bottle and some combination 'tasters' on the menu costing almost £100 a go, so you'll easily be able to squander a fortune without any difficulty. read more
