Cafe des Amis

Cafe des Amis
11-14 Hanover Place
London
WC2E 9JP
www.cafedesamis.co.uk
Date of visit: Saturday 24^th April 2010
Attendees: Myself and The Baby (aka Kevin)
Price of meal: with 50% off a la carte deal £23.26 – this is more than it should have been, we were over charged.

I had heard some good things about Cafe des Amis so decided to take The Baby there before we went to the theatre. We decided to go for the 50% of meal from the a la carte menu rather than the pre-theatre menu as we wanted a bigger choice.

From the moment we turned up it was a bad experience. A male waiter was having a heated exchange with the lady at the booking/ reception desk. We didn’t get a smile when we told her we had a booking, it didn’t seem that we were allocated a table when we booked as she hunted round the restaurant for a table. When we did get a table there were crumbs on my seat, the decoration behind me was damaged and there were paper napkins on most of the table and cloth napkins on others – very shoddy. I popped to the toilet which were clean, but felt more that they belonged to an abattoir with toneless grey interior and stainless steel sinks.

Damaged wall

Paper napkin on our table - I did wonder if they used paper napkins to denote tables for people on an offer

The waitress who took our order was very nice on contrast to the grumpy lady at the reception desk. We waited too long for our starter really but they eventually did arrive.

Starter:
Myself: half dozen oysters marennes d’olérons no.2, shallot & muscatel vinegar
The Baby: Asparagus wrapped in Parma ham, poached egg, hollandaise sauce

Oysters

Asparagus, Parma ham and egg

The oysters were ok and the dressing gave them a nice flavor, not much else to say on it but just to mention that there was a bit of salad leaf stuck to the bottom of the dish – rather horrid, says the surface in the restaurants aren’t clean – yuk. The Baby said her starter was tasteless and that there was too much sauce but not enough asparagus which was small in stature.

We waited nearly 30 minutes for our mains and were going to ask where our food was or leave – there was a lot of noise around the restaurant and I don’t mean the other diners it was chairs and tables being dragged about. Finally the waitress who took our order came up and politely apologised our wait and that our food would arrive soon. We felt bad for the table next to us who were obviously off to the theatre and had ordered from the theatre menu hoping to be able to eat and go quickly. When their food arrived they seemed rushed two of them paid as the others were still shovelling the food down.

Main Course
Myself: Red tuna steak, tomato salsa, sweet potato mash
The Baby: Roast duck breast with glazed carrots and parsnips, Grand Marnier sauce

Small tuna steak

Duck chucked on a plate

The tuna steak was tiny, the whole dish was tiny. The chunk of lemon on top of the steak was about half the size of the steak, so my tuna steak was double the size of a large slice of lemon – not even worth the price when there is 50% off. It tasted good and so was the sweet potato mash, the salsa was good. Generally the dish really didn’t fill me up and I was seriously contemplating ordering the bread basket. The presentation of the Baby’s food was poor – it was thrown together, the duck was shovelled to one side on top of unappetising looking sauce (looked like a heavily bleeding duck basically, see image – again the abattoir theme) but it tasted really nice. The vegetables were just chucked on the other side of the plate. The Baby told me the duck was tasty but a little tough. We both asked for our meats to be done medium but they were well done, a small problem really in the light of how everyone was going wrong.

We ordered dessert even though we didn’t want to but it was part of the deal that we had to have 3 courses.

Dessert:
Myself: Vanilla cheesecake, fig coulis
The Baby: Marinated strawberries, pink muscatel sorbet

Vanilla cheesecake with piped fig coulis on top, look closely and you can see the indents from the holder

Strawberries in cocktail glass

The dessert at least arrived in decent time I reckon this is because they only needed to get these out of the fridge. The cheesecake was very nice and the fig coulis was flavoursome – it was probably the best dish that I had, sad really as this was probably because the only dish on cooked by the kitchen. The Baby enjoyed her strawberries too and said they were very nice.

When we asked for the bill we should have got 50% off but looking at the receipt afterwards we didn’t actually get 50% off so I will have to go back to the restaurant to sort this out – sigh!

It was a very bad experience at Cafe des Amis, a shame really as it is in such a prime location and you can see lots of people going there for the pre theatre meal. We saw lots of tables paying before they had a chance to finish their meal because they had to get away. There were two waitresses who were trying their best but the other waiting staff didn’t care, some of them wouldn’t even look at you. The wait for the food was too long, it didn’t taste very good and the interior needs a lot of help. I certainly won’t be going back, offer or not.