Spuntino is currently London's most fashionable recent opening. Really. At the time of writing, it ranks first on Urbanspoon's Talk of the Town (with Heston's Dinner no 2 and Jason Atherton's Pollen Street Social no 3). Scroll down the page on Urbanspoon and you can also see that Spuntino has already accumulated 25 blog reviews, the first being dated at its public opening on 14 March. In other words, in the 56 days they've been open, they received a blog review almost every other day starting from day one. By contrast, somewhere like Roux at Parliament Square, Michel Roux Jr's first venture outside of Le Gavroche and now open almost a year, has received just two blog uploads to Urbanspoon since opening, with the last post being more than six months ago. We are then, as always, fashionably late.
As the 26th post on Spuntino, why bother perhaps? The reason is that Spuntino gave us a unique experience. Sadly, uniquely bad.
The food wasn't particularly the problem, it was okay but not great. And it's not because they serve 'egg and soldiers' rather than a terrine of foie gras, we're more than happy that food should be what it is, honest to the idea of the venue.
To the food (keeping in mind this wasn't the problem), it was just okay. Admittedly, the spiced mackerel slider was considered excellent by our dining companion, the ever knowledgeable @siepert, but the 'beef and bone marrow' slider was nowhere near the quality of that served at Opera Tavern for example. The aforementioned 'egg and soldier' was again, okay, though the egg was transitioning to the world of overcooked and the crispy outside was simply bland to taste. Shoestring fries meanwhile were pale and could have been more crispy but most seriously, were actually cold on serving.
But none of this was the problem. The real problem was that the service was so inattentive that we got bored of waiting prompting us to get up and leave (to add, we did pay the bill before leaving). The deal is with Spuntino is that it serves small plates, possibly sharing, so we ordered a bunch of stuff with the view that we'd gauge portion size and appetites and then order a second round. But having finished a minimalist first round (egg + slider) our plates hadn't even been cleared after sitting there empty for twenty minutes perhaps, maybe more. We finished too the bottle of wine that had arrived with the food as we waited. With no food and no drink, we waited some more.
As the 26th post on Spuntino, why bother perhaps? The reason is that Spuntino gave us a unique experience. Sadly, uniquely bad.
The food wasn't particularly the problem, it was okay but not great. And it's not because they serve 'egg and soldiers' rather than a terrine of foie gras, we're more than happy that food should be what it is, honest to the idea of the venue.
To the food (keeping in mind this wasn't the problem), it was just okay. Admittedly, the spiced mackerel slider was considered excellent by our dining companion, the ever knowledgeable @siepert, but the 'beef and bone marrow' slider was nowhere near the quality of that served at Opera Tavern for example. The aforementioned 'egg and soldier' was again, okay, though the egg was transitioning to the world of overcooked and the crispy outside was simply bland to taste. Shoestring fries meanwhile were pale and could have been more crispy but most seriously, were actually cold on serving.
But none of this was the problem. The real problem was that the service was so inattentive that we got bored of waiting prompting us to get up and leave (to add, we did pay the bill before leaving). The deal is with Spuntino is that it serves small plates, possibly sharing, so we ordered a bunch of stuff with the view that we'd gauge portion size and appetites and then order a second round. But having finished a minimalist first round (egg + slider) our plates hadn't even been cleared after sitting there empty for twenty minutes perhaps, maybe more. We finished too the bottle of wine that had arrived with the food as we waited. With no food and no drink, we waited some more.
egg and soldiers
sliders
Shoestring fries
Stuffed fried olives
Chopped salad
Baby gem, soft egg, creamed cod dressing
We sat actively looking to staff so we could give our follow on order, no one seemed to care, our dirty plates sat miserably in front of us. It's not a big place and it wasn't even full, rather, it was like no one felt it was their job to do anything; staff mostly stood around, one loaded the dishwasher. Boredom turned to frustration but they didn't notice this either. Back to Urbanspoon, 87% who have voted on Spuntino like it (which fell to 86% after I pressed the 'don't like it' button), but we're not entirely alone, we note that on 8 April in the User reviews 'Paul' comments that Spuntino offered 'the rudest service I have ever had quite possibly'. Paul, we hear your pain.
There was only so much waiting we could take, bored and growing irritable, we finally decided to decamp to a different restaurant to finish our lunch. And so this became our unique experience: abandoning a restaurant after only a starter to complete our lunch elsewhere because the service was so poor we felt compelled to for the sake of our sanity. Fortunately in Soho, you're never far from anywhere else and just two minutes later we were comfortably seated at Bocca Di Lupo where we had an excellent lunch, the topic of our next post.
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Related posts: Opera Tavern
There was only so much waiting we could take, bored and growing irritable, we finally decided to decamp to a different restaurant to finish our lunch. And so this became our unique experience: abandoning a restaurant after only a starter to complete our lunch elsewhere because the service was so poor we felt compelled to for the sake of our sanity. Fortunately in Soho, you're never far from anywhere else and just two minutes later we were comfortably seated at Bocca Di Lupo where we had an excellent lunch, the topic of our next post.
Return to homepage
Related posts: Opera Tavern
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