If you perform search on Google for 'kerridge's bar and grill', the restaurant's own website appears with with the description:
"A refined British restaurant by Michelin-starred chef Tom Kerridge, located within five-star hotel Corinthia London."
Although Tom Kerridge holds Michelin stars at some of his other restaurants, located elsewhere, Kerridge's Bar & Grill at the Corinthia hotel does not hold a Michelin star.
The restaurant have purposely use this wording in the HTML metatags of their website in order to ensure that this is displayed in Google and other search engines as the description of the restaurant:
meta name="description" content="A refined British restaurant by Michelin-starred chef Tom Kerridge, located within five-star hotel Corinthia London."
Some may view the above practice as misleading and deceptive. Prospective diners could incorrectly infer that the restaurant holds a Michelin star when it does not.
I was looking for somewhere outstanding to take some key members of my staff for a Christmas meal and came across Kerridge's Bar & Grill.
The restaurant has a private dining room which is described on the website as:
"one of London's most beautiful dining experiences"
Having dined as some of the world's leading restaurants and experienced other private dining and chef's tables in London with my team, I decided to book the private dining room at Kerridge's Bar & Grill for a Saturday evening in December.
There were ten of us in total and our total spend was £4781.70 - nearly five-thousand pounds - not far off £500 per head.
This also included a '15% Service Charge' of £623.70 that the restaurant automatically added to the bill and helped themselves to.
You would think that for this level of spend, and service charge, you would have an amazing experience, with the very best food and service. After all, you can pretty much dine at any restaurant in the world for less than £500 per head.
Whilst the food was nice, with each course being introduced by one of the restaurant's chefs, the front of house service was in our opinion very poor and not at all indicative of the type of service that you would expect for the money.
We felt the service was unfriendly and robotic. We were not warmly welcomed. At no point did the front of house staff ask how our meal was or if we wanted any additional drinks. We were not thanked when we paid the bill prior to leaving. It felt like that our custom was not appreciated at all.
Other private dining rooms and chef's tables from well known Michelin starred chefs that we have dined at in London have delivered a far superior service, really going out of their way to deliver a memorable, warm and welcoming experience.
The waitress that served us seemed so miserable that it felt like she didn't really want to be there and that we were a mere inconvenience.
In most quality restaurants, when you are paying this kind of money, the maitre d' or duty manager would come over to the table to say hello and to ensure that everyone was happy but that did not happen.
We opted for wine pairings, chosen by the restaurant's sommelier, with each course. The sommelier was friendly but whilst one of our guests was pregnant and we had informed the restaurant that she would not be drinking any alcohol, I was still charged an additional £100 for wine pairing for this person.
The pregnant lady wasn't asked if she would like non-alcoholic cocktails or other soft drinks in substitute of the wine pairing. She had to specifically ask to see a drinks menu.
It wasn't clear who our contract with the restaurant was with. We were asked to sign Terms & Conditions when making the booking, and pay a £1250 deposit, but they did not make any reference to the name of the corporate entity that we were actually contracting with.
The receipt from the restaurant shows a VAT registration number registered to a company called NLI Operator Limited whose ultimate parent company is IHI Plc, a company registered in Malta. The same company appear to own the Corinthia Hotel.
I am not clear how much involvement Tom Kerridge actually has in Kerridge's Bar & Grill but based upon my experience, I would not wish to dine at another Tom Kerridge establishment again.
It would appear that the restaurant is a hotel restaurant with some kind of brand licencing agreement. The 'Kerridge's Bar & Restaurant' trademark is owned by Tom Kerridge Media Limited.
Looking at other online reviews of the restaurant, I can see that I am not the only diner to have received a similar poor service.
I emailed the restaurant to provide my feedback and did receive a call from someone who said that "If I think I received a bad service" they would remove the service charge and also the charge for the wine pairings of the pregnant guest.
I am still awaiting a refund of the service charge and incorrectly charged wine pairing charge. read more