Kettner’s Restaurant and Champagne Bar

Kettner’s Restaurant and Champagne bar
29 Romilly Street
Soho
London
W1D 5HP
http://www.kettners.com/
Date visited: Friday 22nd October 2010
Attendees: Myself and the girls
Price of meal: 3 courses for £18.50 pre-theatre deal about £21.50 including service not including drinks

I had wanted to try Kettners for a while as it has a nice history (opened by Auguste Kettner chef to Napoleon III in 1867 and boast a who’s who of celebs diners through the ages) it also has a fun website that really helps to sell it. So I was very pleased when my main girl chooses it for a dinner meet up.

We arrived on time but the table isn’t ready so we are asked to wait in the champagne bar which sells a large and extensive list of champagne and not much else. We were finally seated 30 minutes later, it was about 7pm but as it wasn’t our fault we could still get the pre theatre menu. Some of the girls were running late but our very camp and friendly waiter was very good about it. Here I must tell you why there will be no photos of the food – the lighting is very very low. There are small lamps around the side and these are on the lowest possible setting glowing a dark orange-brown colour and as we were sitting on the large table in the middle of the room we had a candelabra (with real candles – eek!) in the middle of the table as our only source of light so everything was very dark.  The flash on my camera phone is too powerful so things were either bleached white or pitch dark, thus no photos.  The interior of the restaurant was lovely though. Like it was stuck in a 1920s time bubble – fun and atmospheric and you expect the Charleston girls to jump out dancing at any moment.

Starter:
Myself: Mackerel with picked vegetable salad

The mackerel was generously drizzled with oil but tasted nice and was well cooked. The pickled vegetables were far too strong, the vinegar really over powered everything and hurt my throat to eat it. Whatever the other dish was that the girls had they really seemed to enjoy it (sorry can’t even remember what it might have been).

I popped to the toilet after the starters and as I walked back through the other rooms I noticed a great looking dessert bar and just how big the restaurant is. There were 3 rooms, each with their own name, on the ground floor and the champagne bar. The toilets are on the first floor which also has several smaller private dinning rooms. I pick up a card later on and notice that there is a second floor that has more private dinning rooms – the ground floor dinning rooms can hold 250 people so the entire building must be able to hold loads of people! The toilets are a bit shabby (needs a paint job and a few bits need replacing) but there is a large anteroom with comfortable seats and mirrors for you to do your make-up and adjust dresses etc. The hand wash and hand cream are Molten Brown.

Ladies powder anteroom

Main course:
Myself: Grilled red snapper with black olive mash, rocket and tomato confit
Other dish: steak with horseradish mash and Tabasco onions

The fish was well cooked, moist but I did get a bone and scale in a fork full which isn’t great. The black olive mash was a revelation to me, it was very good. The mash was smooth but had bite (I hate it when mash it almost like a puree), it was well seasoned and the olives really did give it an extra something. One small comment I would make is that they put large chucks of olives in and I think it would have been a bit more refined if the olives pieces were smaller. The rocket salad was over seasoned and you could barely taste rocket, it felt like a mouth full of salty leaves. The tomato confit suffered the same problem, I could not taste tomato it was all salt.

The girls having the steak all said it was great and some even felt it was the best steak they had tasted making me think I had gone for the wrong choice.

Dessert:
Myself: Mango mousse
Other dish: Carrot cake

The mousse came in a nice martini glass and had the right colour but that is about as good as I can say about it. It was tasteless heavy cream, so the colour was just e-numbers. I tried some of the carrot cake which was a little dry but the icing was nice so generally the carrot cake was better.

Summary: The service was great, our camp and friendly waiter was patient and efficient. The interior and setting was really nice although it was a bit dark so not a place I would recommend to anyone who had any kind of slight impairment as you wouldn’t be able to read the menu. The food was edible, I certainly would not pay full price if that is the quality of the food for the a la carte. I think for a fun and decadent setting for a private party where your main concern is not the food Kettners would be great. Also not sure what genre of cuisine – it certainly isn’t just French anymore.