Bourne & Hollingsworth Buildings — Restaurant in London

⬇️ @ Sonia Usha Kumar. As I don't work for B & H Buildings anymore, I feel I'm now in a capacity to write a response to your review below. Firstly, you arrived late for your reservation, so you may have been especially sensitive to being told that all guests have one and a half hours at the table from the time of their reservation. Hosts have to remind all guests of the hour and a half time limit at brunch when seating them. All guests are also told about the hour and a half timing (which is two hours for party sizes of 10 or more) at the time of their booking, if they've booked over the phone. If they've booked online, then all guests are told this information a few days before their reservation either by e-mail or phone call/ voicemail, when we do the confirmations on all bookings.

You put a note on your online booking (that you had made two days beforehand) that it was your friend's birthday and you wanted to be seated in the Greenhouse area of the restaurant. At the time you'd booked for, we had one hen party and two birthdays already seated in the Greenhouse, who were not only larger party sizes than your party size of 3, they had all booked between 2 weeks and over 2 months in advance. I explained that we always do our best to accommodate guests' wishes, but I could not seat you in the Greenhouse this time, despite your recent request, as we could only accommodate the larger party sizes in the Greenhouse with those tables pushed together and we also had to honour the requests of the guests who had booked before you.

You seemed extremely disappointed and dissatisfied, despite my full explanation and apology. I did not tell you that I had previously spent about half an hour, under time pressure, juggling all the reservations for that day (which is a bit like a game of Tetris trying to make all the differing timings work, to allow everyone their full time allowance at least), trying to get you seated in the table nearest the Greenhouse, with a nice view of it and a comfortable green velvet corner sofa, to get as close as I could to your request.

Halfway through your meal, when I was seating other guests, I noticed you trying to attract my attention, so when I'd seated them I went to your table. You complained that you believed I had been ignoring you, as had my fellow host, David, and that you were trying to get top ups on your drinks for some time. I apologised and tried to reassure you that I hadn't been ignoring you, nor would David, but that you have such a quiet voice, I simply did not hear you amid the noise of the high-spirited hen party and birthday parties nearby. You had a waitress assigned to you, in her section, so I immediately told her what you'd said and she went straight away to top up your drinks. She also extended the times on your bottomless drinks, as she wanted to make you happy.

I did not see you again until you sashayed theatrically out of the restaurant, giving me not just one, but three full-body dirty looks for good measure, before swinging the door open with a slam against our piano and storming out. I was asking my co-host with utter bemusement what on earth that was about, when your waitress came up to the piano, tearful and extremely distressed at the verbal abuse she'd just suffered from you (she's one of the most hard-working, sweet and on the ball employees there, by the way) and her confusion about why you'd just shouted at her the reasons why you chose to pay zero service charge.

FYI Sonia, when guests choose to behave in an unconscionably rude, brattish and demanding manner, staff will put a note on your Opentable record to that effect and you will probably find that with your future reservations in any restaurant that uses Opentable, staff there will be a little less amenable to bend over backwards to accommodate the extra special treatment over and above other guests that you seem to feel you deserve.

"Never again"? I'm sure the hard-working staff there will be...

My husband's and my visit to this place can be summed up with one word - disappointment. The greenhouse was closed to customers - so that was a let down, as the area we were sat at looked nowhere near as chic as it did on the photos. A few nice details, but the walls were largely just white and bare - I guess the big plants might have been taken away for maintenance or something. Don't bother putting anything in the comments when making your booking online either, because the staff don't read them anyway - when my husband booked our table, he mentioned it's for a birthday celebration, but this wasn't acknowledged in any way shape or form. The food was ridiculously overpriced and felt like a complete waste of money, because of how unexceptional it was. There were only 4 main options on the dinner menu - fish, lamb, veggie and steak (which was £6 on top of the already high set menu price!). I decided to go for the steak, and my husband for the lamb. We were both very unhappy with our meal. The steak was supposed to be medium, but came hard and chewy. When I communicated this to the waiter, he suggested I may not know what a 'dry aged steak means'. I didn't want to argue on a night I was supposed to be celebrating, so just left it at that. But I couldn't finish my meal and I certainly didn't enjoy it. The shiitake mushrooms that came with the steak tasted too strongly of vinegar. The peas used in both dishes were very clearly either frozen or dried. Bearnaise sauce was alright, but nothing extraordinary - and it didn't really save the steak, which was just dry, tough and tasteless. Neither the steak nor the lamb were cooked in any special way, there were no herbs or seasonings used, and it didn't even seem like the meat was grilled, even though the menu stated it was supposed to be. The flavours generally didn't work well together in either of the meals, there was just absolutely nothing special about them, and I couldn't help but think I got more enjoyment out of a kebab from my local shop, than this hyped-up expensive place. For dessert I ordered the Miso ice cream, which was the nicest thing I ate that evening. My husband's dessert, however - the poached rhubarb - was absolutely revolting. Literally just sour and soggy rhubarb, with 'toasted barley cream' - which was just the weirdest combination... But hey, perhaps our tastes were just not sophisticated enough! Anyway, my recommendation to anyone reading this would be to spend your money elsewhere - there a plenty of places much better than this. And I am normally the last person to leave a negative feedback, as I am hardly ever that fussed. But we came there to celebrate a special occasion, and left feeling like our money and time was wasted - so I thought if I could prevent someone else from experiencing the same, it's worth my time...

Multiple things made this brunch an unpleasant experience not to reniew (Reservation, Venue Decor, Food).

First the reservation: we heard about it on SM so we didnt know that making a reservation is automatically spending a minimum of £29 for one brunch package & card registration in case you cancel less than 48hours (we booked less than 24hours). That's on us for not reading through the websites and only see the photos , eventhough the whole thing made me a bit uncomfortable.

Now the venue: it must be very specific angles or hidden corner but I wasnt able to see the areas that were presented on their SM photos. We were positionned next to the corridor leading to the Kitchen. It wasn't as fancy as the photos Led to think, I hoped to have a full experience as the Friend from Paris visiting had wanted to try that restaurant for quite some time.

The food: My friend and I are French foodies and good cook. Unfortunately that meant a little expectation when it came to the presentation and taste, especially when we received an email explaining to us that we had 1.5hour to eat because the venue is soooo trendy. So the Vegetarian english Breakfast was good.Really, No comments. The course with the pancakes was disaster: The pancakes tasted like fried flat doughnuts soaked in all. I actually pressed with a fork and oil started dripping. It was a bit disgusting. My friend chosed Fresh Blueberry Pancakes with whipped cream. She was served whzt could only be Canned cherries.they were bigger than cherries, PINK, and a pink liquid (the can Juice?) All over her plate. We sent them both back and the server informed us there were actually no blueberries (then why propose it? It's even the season!) Anyways, the manager was happy for us to order something different, we both took the caramelised banana. Banana is one of the cheapest fruits in the market and we got 4 tiny slices (yes, I counted). Also, on the restaurant IG, it shows that this course comes with 4 pancakes and bananas dripping! The pancakes taste was still below average, which was really a surprise and disappointment for us as they are so easy to do.. Oh well....we didnt finish. the manager offered us to remove 20% and the service chargé, which Im grateful for and hence why I added a second star. But Unfortunately it doesnt change our experience of it, just made the pill easier to swallow when we had to pay ^^ Im sorry this review is so long. I choose not to put the photo to hurt their image more but yes...would not...