We randomly found this restaurant on Christmas Eve while visiting London. We decided to try since they had a couple of reservation available and close to our hotel. The staff was amazing and the food was fantastic. We thoroughly enjoyed everything and highly recommend visiting! read more

See all

Nothing special here. Recommended by hotel as a close to the theater spot before Wicked at Apollo Victoria. Light crowd at 6:30 pm on a Monday evening. Close to the theater and easy reservation. Staff is least refined we've encountered in London - and meal was ok but not inspired and didn't fit the price. Best dish was their little pizza amuse bouche. As others have written, the dishes are very pricy for the area. Many other Italian restaurants in the area are much better and you will have half a truffle on your plate for the same price as the grocery store cabbage and spring mix they presented here. It was a bit awkward as our neighboring table had a coupon from their hotel for two glasses of Prosecco. I guess ours did not but perhaps they should spend the money here on marketing and just offer it to everyone. Started with an old fashioned. Not a bad drink but mostly ice. Drink quickly or it's diluted and just a few sips. Fried zucchini was generous but that meant oil went cold and they were too greasy. Winter salad ok but very bitter and sweet without being balanced. In addition to the little bite of pizza, we appreciated the little fried dessert they offered. They also have a cute outdoor patio for the smokers. read more

See all

Ambiance was very nice, but the food was not great. The presentation of my meal was nice, but scallops were rubbery and lacked flavor despite many delicious sounding ingredients (perhaps overcooked). For a £48 plate, I expect not to have to salt bland food. The calamari starter was £27 but was completely mediocre - again a bit rubbery and heavily battered. The sauces for the calamari were a boring mayo and plain marinara. The waitress asked if we would like water. We did not expect to be charged £6.5 each for sparking and still water. The desserts were £15 each for nothing special so we didn't order anything (and we are suckers for dessert!). We had hoped for a nice dinner on our last night in London and it would have been a nicer meal with pub food. Total bill was £160 for one starter, two bland dishes, water, one glass of Prosecco and no dessert. We wouldn't have blinked at the bill if the food were better. read more

Santini is a cut above all restaurants. The food is excellent, and the service is perfect. We went for appetizers, full dinner, and birthday dessert-which they did not charge! Everything was delicious. The wait-staff was attentive and kind. I can't wait to go back. read more

We stopped at Santini on a nice summer evening for dinner. They are located in the Belgravia area of London. We did not drive so I'm not aware of their parking situation. They feature inside and patio seating and we opted to sit outside and enjoy the nice weather. We had not made reservations but were seated quickly at a nice table although the restaurant was almost full. Santini is an upscale Northern Italian restaurant with attentive and friendly service. The patio was super cute and rustic, with a lot of plants and vegetation. They had space heaters available, standing by for patrons who needed them to keep warm. Overall ambiance was relaxing and comfortable. Our favorites were the Milanese Santini (a large nicely breaded bone-in Veal Milanese) and the Zucchini Fries. The Milanese was huge, and it featured a wonderful dichotomy of textures thanks to its crisply breaded crust and the soft velvety meat. Their menu also featured gluten free pasta as an option which was a nice touch. We were too full to have dessert but will definitely try it the next time. The desserts that passed by our table all looked yummy! I highly recommend Santini and we will definitely visit again. read more

See all

This is an exquisite Italian restaurant from start to finish. The wait staff are also wonderful and contribute significantly to our thorough enjoyment of this fine eating establishment. I encourage all to try the Branzino Santini. We've had the pleasure of enjoying many a lunch and dinner, professional and personal meal at Santini and it always delivers. Go. Enjoy. Bravo. read more

Excellent service, quality of food, and ambience. What a great find! Really well prepared, and beautifully served. Risotto, for example was fantastic, each flavor separate and distinct. read more

We were three hungry individuals who wanted to indulge in prime Italian food, and off to Santini we went. The setting is nice and chill, but you're actually there to eat, and that's where it all goes splat. We got three pasta dishes and a salad (like I said, very hungry), and each one disappointed at a different level. There was no actual depth of flavor to any of the dishes and they were all very bland. I've gotten more flavor out of an M&S ready made pasta than I did from the dishes at Santini. Oh, and that salad (crab salad you scoop into lettuce spears)? I was chomping away despite the crab being overtly smelly, and I almost broke a tooth. I was surprised there was something that hard in there, as it seemed like a soft salad. Lo and behold, it was a shell of some sort?? (Will upload photo.) Also worth mentioning, we only got served the salad after two of our entrees came to the table. The best part of our meal was the Diet Coke and single piece of bread served to us before the entrees arrive. After paying a whopping £112 pounds for the bill, I cried on my way to M&S to get me some microwave spaghetti bolognese. read more

Santini - That's the ?shell I almost broke my tooth on (found in salad.) - Italian Near Me - Belgravia, XGL

Very disappointing experience. The food was mediocre at best, the service poor and overall it was really over prized. This is supposed to be "fine dining", and it may have been a good restaurant once. But it's not good by any standard any longer. The artichoke starter, was not the heart (as you might expect), but a whole artichoke, steeped in a pesto sauce. It was laboring, lazy and wholly unenjoyable and was therefor sent back. The other starters (beef & tuna carpaccio) were bland. The mains (pasta and steak) was undercooked and overcooked and we had to send them back as well. If you are paying 50£ for a steak, it should be well made. This was just ridiculous. The service was despondent, rude and slow. Even after all the dishes we sent back, they still tried to make us pay for fries and salad (that was part of the steak meal) and they didn't apologize once for the many mistakes they made, both in terms of service and cooking. The best thing about this place was the wine - Santini didn't make that, but they sure charged for it (54£). Don't spend you money in this place, Santini doesn't deserve it! read more

this is my favorite restaurant.. try the scallops and the liver..AMAZING, Go for the specials and their wine recommendations. Excellent service, quiet and semi-formal. read more

Place highly recommended by St Ermins concierge but ended up mildly disappointing. It is not easy to find and in an isolated location. Atmosphere was ok but underwhelming. We sat in a nice corner location where service was good to start but deteriorated. The wait staff did not speak or understand much English and didn't care. They were out of many Italian wines and did not have the right pasta for one of their popular dishes. The bartender started loudly cleaning out ice bin as soon as we received our meal which was good but not as good as advertised. It took numerous asks to get check and we are sure there are better spots to spend over 200 pounds in London on good Italian food. Do not get sucked into the website claiming VIP diners as those were days past! read more

If you need some carb loading, come to Santini. Their homemade pasta and freshly baked rosemary focaccia bread were amazing. I came here for lunch with a date and this was what we had. SPAGHETTI ALL'ARAGOSTA 30 pounds Whole lobster spaghetti, fresh tomato - The home made spaghetti was cooked perfectly and the fresh tomato sauce complimented so well with the lobster. It really brought the freshness and sweetness out of the lobster. LINGUINE AL GRANCHIO 22 pounds Linguine, hand-picked Cornish crab, garlic, lemon, parsley, chilli - I could never cook this at home. The idea of having to de-shell the crab already gives me a headache. I leave to the pro to take care of it. read more

One of the top restaurants in London, based on my year here. Family-owned and run, with great attention and pride paid to the food and service. Nice room. Relaxed about seating/reservations provided you're reasonably dressed (I note the review below -- t-shirts and jeans are definitely not appropriate for this place, although they should have sat that group outside on a lunch during the summer). It would have a tough time competing with the top restaurants in Paris and New York -- hence the 4/5 -- but it's at the top of the stack in London and I've always left happy. read more

Unassuming from the outside (so much so that I've walked past Santini a number of times and never realised it was a restaurant), Santini's interior is light, elegant and oozing in business-lunch atmosphere. The lunchtime clientele are generally suited and the dining area hums with murmured conversation. The waiting staff are as smart as the tables and reel off an impressive menu of specials (today's include veal meatballs with handmade fettuccine, chicken parmigiana and grilled calamari amongst others of equally Italian leanings). The wine list covers a wide range of budgets (£400 for a bottle of wine, anyone?) and the menu (available on the restaurant's website) offers a good selection of starters, salads, pastas, fish dishes and secondi. Make no mistake, this place is pricey a starter of grilled scallops comes in at £17 whilst you'll pay over £20 for some of the pasta dishes and £33 for the fish-lover's delight, a whole grilled Dover sole. Lunch begins with a selection of bread (of varying quality) and small dishes of exceptionally tasty olive oil and disappointingly bitter balsamic vinegar. The starters arrive promptly and, once I get past the too-thick batter, my deep-fried courgette flowers stuffed with mozzarella and herbs are quite delicious. My Dover Sole (someone else is paying!) is spectacular; the fish is well-cooked and there isn't too much added which allows it to really be the star of the show flavour-wise. The mashed potato that I order on the side is creamy and well-seasoned, but lamentably contains almost as many lumps as when I make it at home! There are six in my party and between us we cover a fair bit of the menu, but, quite surprisingly for this group, there are no exclamations of intense joy at any one dish which I really feel there should be at this price point. Don't get me wrong, Santini's food is good, it's just not amazing and that's a real shame. read more

We stayed at a nearby hotel that recommended this restaurant and gave us a coupon for a free round of prosecco. The guy who took our coupon was a real grouch and acted ticked off that we were requesting a freebee (though he did produce the goods). The food was mediocre and a bit pricey for what you got. We had a table in the middle of the room but were mostly ignored by the staff. Wouldn't recommend this place to a friend. read more

This was a recommendation by our Concierge at the Grosvenor and we are glad we tried it out. It's the best Italian I've had ever. The outside atmosphere was perfect for a nice evening. The wait staff couldn't be more helpful and pleasant. The food was delicious and I wouldn't hesitate to recommend this place to anyone else. The soup was the best I've had and make sure you leave room for their delicious dessert menu too! read more

See all

So, I happen to be a Google employee. Today we had a fire alarm (turned out to be a false one), and had to rush out of the building, just to find ourselves on the pavement of lovely Belgravia in a gorgeous London noon. While we were waiting for the situation to be cleared we strolled around a bit, and we thought we could try out Santini's, given our canteen is becoming somewhat boring, these last few months. So we arrive at Santini's, four Google engineers in our "official uniform"... erh... that is our t-shirts and jeans. The restaurant is 95% empty, but the people at the entrance look at us with an expression ranging from an unconcealed bewilderment to a badly dissimulated contempt. In fact the few other customers are all in suits and costumes. A pretty unsympathetic waiter tells us that the terrace is all booked, and we'll have to sit inside. While my naive and unsuspecting british friends cheerfully sit down and foretaste the meal, I can't help but remarking how blatant was the lie that we were served. Not only the terrace has not less than 20 tables empty, but I sure can recognize non-verbal messages exchanged between two italian waiters swiftly communicating to one another: "quick: we can't have people in t-shirts on the public view!". As it turns out, this is a pretty high-brow venue. So, I'll make it brief: the restaurant is lovely (especially the large terrace, on a not very busy Belgravia road), with stucco walls and chairs with linings, low music, good light, zealous waiters (one almost jumped on me when I dared trying to pour myself some wine, saying "please", grabbing the bottle from my hands and pouring it by himself). Food is good to very good. We had a risotto + asparagus + taleggio + black truffle that was tasty, reasonably well "mantecato", fairly balanced in the tastes, but a little too fat. I then tried a special rabbit that was good but not unforgettable, and I watched my friends tasting spaghetti alla carbonara, chicken "alla diavola", and cotoletta alla milanese. At this point every italian would probably guess what I'm about to say: so a high-brow restaurant is serving spaghetti alla carbonara, pollo alla diavola and cotoletta alla milanese? Now, they must have been absolutely fantastic, because no italian restaurant would serve such everyday dishes except if they know they are producing sheer perfection. Well, the truth is that it wasn't sheer perfection. The "cotoletta" was a little too dry (albeit good) - and no restaurant in the whole world, for classy and luxurious, should ask 26£ for a slice of breaded veal - the chicken a little too spicy (albeit good), the pasta was a little too thin and salty (albeit good). The wine, at 35 pounds per bottle, was a little unstructured (albeit good). Ended up paying 60 pounds per person, for a 2 courses meal. Not worth it: for a little more I'd be treating myself at Gordon Ramsay's Maze, a couple of bus stops away. read more

I didn't have a great experience at Santini. For 70 quid on a solo meal, I expected smiling, attentive waiters and great food. What I received with my pasta, steak, and wine, was a slightly beleaguered wait staff and good food. My waiter was clearly going through the motions and rarely visited my table. My pasta and steak were prepared with the same level of quality and detail as any white tablecloth restaurant - enjoyable, but nothing stood out. If the meal ended up half the price, this would be a 4-star place that could use a bit more service training. As it stands, it barely passed 3-star for me. read more

One of the most fantastic restaurants I've ever been. Great food is not always about fancy stuff. This is a great Italian restaurant with a lot of style and character. One clear example is that they have an exotic fruit sorbet desert where the sorbet comes inside the skin of the fruits. Just incredible and tastes delicious! read more

We were not impressed with this place at all. The service was extremely slow. It took a little over an hour and 45 mins for our food to come out and it was mediocre at best. My dish was very bland and the pasta was undercooked. The staff wasn't very attentive either. They saw us waiting forever for our food and didn't offer anymore bread or anything. On top of that, the staff was openly arguing with each other on the floor. It was very odd. Needless to say, the next time we are in London we won't be back. Save your money and time and go elsewhere as I'm sure there are much better Italian restaurants in the area. read more

My husband and I accidentally stumbled upon Santini after a full day of sightseeing around London. We were staying at a hotel nearby and wanted a hearty meal. Santini did not disappoint. This restaurant served some of the best Italian I've ever had in my life. The service was fantastic. I highly recommend ordering the artichoke as an appetizer. read more

The best Italian food I've had in England, no question. Just a block away from the hustle and bustle of Victoria station, this restaurant feels like Old London, and rightly so, as it's been here for 25 years. The food is perfect, and inventive without being showy, retaining that delicious Italian simplicity people know and love. The service is impeccable- friendly, helpful, and efficient. We went here for a pre-theatre dinner, and it was honestly perfect. Would definitely recommend this to friends who want a special Italian meal in London. read more

Santini had been recommended by several co-workers, so I was excited about dining there. The ambiance of the restaurant was lovely. The staff were incredibly attentive. My starter was a Caesar Salad that was perfect. The shaved Parmesan perfectly sat upon romaine lettuce that had been dressed in just enough salad dressing. In lieu of my order of spinach ravioli with cherry tomato sauce, the waiter recommended the porcini mushroom risotto. He had been recommending this dish to each table. Despite my reservations, I tried the despite. Unfortunately, the cream sauce was a bit off and ultimately ruined the meal. Thus, I ended the meal with a cup of petal herbal tea and went home with a tummy ache. Disappointing. read more

Nice upscale Italian restaurant. Hands down the best restaurant patio Christmas lighting. Patio was open, awning with space heaters. Noticed they gave blankets to the ladies outside if the space heaters weren't enough, a nice touch. Food was not great relative to what they charged. Not bad, just didn't live up to the price. Also, an espresso should come with a small slice of lemon peel on the tiny spoon. If you like Italian, you know what I mean. read more

Santini has been a long-standing favorite of mine for delicious Italian food. They are consistent, polite, and serve only high quality dishes. Also, during London's seemingly few warm summer days & nights, Santini has a fantastic outdoor seating area. read more

Great food, simple menu, and the specials are always a good choice. Love it outside!

I have frequented here quite often and I absolutely love it. Probably the best Escalope Milanaise in town. The atmosphere is great especially if it's a beautiful day and you opt to seat in the outdoor area. The service is superb. Almost every dish is a hit. Nothing is too much or too little. You will leave here satisfied every single time. read more

I'm a fan of Italian food and i'm constantly hunting for good italian restaurants. I was really happy with Santini, the food was delicious and the service was outstanding, also the location is perfect: just a three minutes walk from victoria station that brings you in the quiet Ebury street. I will recommend this place to anyone looking for a classy italian place. read more

This is my first ever review on Yelp. I had to document the poor service received here. I really wanted this to be a good meal. I love Italian food and was excited about coming here. This meal was not a pleasant experience. After reading glowing reviews about this place, I booked a reservation to find a three quarters empty restaurant on a Friday night (warning sign number one). As for the first course, I ordered an iceberg wedge salad and the dressing had a barely discernible bleu cheese dressing (warning sign number two). Our entrees arrived and my husband's entree was wrong and the waitress (who turns out to be the manager) disputed what was ordered (warning sign number three). She did offer to replace it with the correct order, but the time it would take to resolve the issue would have delayed our dinner, so he took the incorrectly prepared entree and we finished the meal. My entree was just okay, a simple cappellini with tomatoes. The check arrives with the added service charge AND a 'cover' charge--including the charge for the wrong entree. When questioned about why she charged us for their mistake the waitress/manager's response was "But he ate it!". I told her this was terrible service and asked that the service charge be removed. To her credit, she did also remove the entree charge, but only after arguing about it, but the damage was already done. A regrettable experience from start to finish. We will never be back. Be forewarned. Diners beware. read more