Dear God it was awful. A complete train wreck.

In short: Don't go. It's terrible and expensive. Everything from the food to the service just got worse and worse. It was awkward. Here's what happened:

Yesterday we came together, 8 friends to see each other after Christmas, see the Kew Christmas lights, and picked Antipodea because the menu looked like it would be a treat. We were so looking forward to it. It wasn't. At all.

The restaurant wasn't that full but I'm guessing (hoping) our waiter was new. He took a drinks order and when he came back didn't have a clue who had ordered what. OK... Not a problem. There's eight people. The same happened with the food. Again... That can happen with a group.

He then served the food for five of the eight people. When there was a bit of a confused lull he informed us that the rest will take four minutes or so.

This left three people waiting awkwardly for their meal while the others began. I had received the main I ordered but none of the sides, so I let it sit there till they came. Again... This can happen but for a decent restaurant this isn't great. So, about the food...

First off: Don't order the pasta dishes. Their "Large Plates" don't tell you that though the plate itself is large, the serving size of four mini ravioli at £17 is at best a starter.

In fact the whole menu is overpriced and Antipodea seems to be one of those horrible places who thinks that this is justified by putting truffle on pizzas and mayonnaise.

You could forgive the serving sizes if it was haute cuisine but while the choices sound fancy, what landed on the table wasn't.

I ordered the lamb (at £22 without sides) which was bland, and what I discovered too late (after waiting for five minutes for my polenta side) was that it wasn't cooked pink. It was rare. And sinewy. I didn't want to make things even more awkward than they already were so I just ate it. (See picture attached.)

The "pizzas" are about what you would get if you ordered a garlic bread in a decent Italian. I don't think anyone was impressed.

They even screwed up the chips! My friend who had the fish and chips said the chips were undercooked.

One positive: The wine and the espresso martinis were very good.

But we're not done yet. At the end of the meal we waited and no one came to take the plates... For ages. We kept trying to catch the eyes of any waiter and it got awkward again.

We had skipped the starters and were looking forward to having coffee and dessert before we go into Kew.

After about five minutes I stopped our waiter rushing past us and asked if we could have a dessert menu. Our waiter brought the menus, left the plates and then disappeared again.

We waited for another five minutes and no one came to take our dessert order.

Finally, we gave up and decided just to leave. We paid the bill, bought some Anzac biscuits at the counter (which to be fair were great) and left. Not just devastated that it wasn't great but angry at how much we just paid for that.

Literally none of us will be coming back.

Also: You know the staff knows they've screwed up when they don't even ask how your meal was. That didn't stop the service charge being on the bill.

Just avoid. It's really not worth the money.