Bread Street Kitchen & Bar - St Paul's — Restaurant in London

A major defeat for Wellington This is a public service announcement. If the Beef Wellington served to us at Bread Street Kitchen St Pauls is going to be Gordon Ramsy’s signature global dish, then he’d better start doing a better job. First the positives. The venue has a buzzy stripped back NY vibe but was only about half full when we visited on Friday 27th October. The staff were uniformly excellent and professional, especially when dealing with issues around the wellington. First gripe, the wine list and pricing. The restaurant/chain operates a 4x mark-up which means in practice you get bang average wines at over £50 a bottle. Genuinely believe if you are going to charge £50-70 a bottle 3x is reasonable. The punter gets a better wine which will complement the food way better. We stuck with the Montes Carmenere at £55. Ok, but distinctly average. Now onto the main event. Let’s start from the outside and work our way in. The puff pastry was fine, well browned and crispy. That’s were the good news stops. Next no pate, no duxelle, no Parma ham, no spinach, no crepe or whatever your supposed to encase the fillet in. Just a porcini paste that was dry claggy and tasteless. Honestly whether you believe the dish is English or French in origin, no recipe I have ever seen involves just a dry mushroom paste. Now, the fillet. It was barely medium-rare, much closer to rare and in the centre, it was blue, which resulted in the meat being quite tough and not meltingly tender as Wellington is supposed to be. Finally, as fillet is not the most flavoursome of cut the jus needs to bind it all together with a rich savoury depth of flavour, or not. What we got was acrid, bitter and genuinely unpleasant. No real beef-stock flavour, just the taste of harsh boiled red wine. I invited the manager to try it, after which it was game over and she instantly knocked the dish off our bill. Look, we came out to have the signature dish from one of the worlds best known chefs. We were quite prepared to pay the £120 asked for it on the basis that it would be the acme, the benchmark of Wellingtons and teach me a thing or two about cooking the dish. But, based on the dish we were served I am prepared to make a public declaration of a mano y mano public contest. A wellington vs Wellington showdown Gordon, because if this is your global signature dish then I can make a damn sight better one than your chefs at your restaurant cooking your recipe. I await...

We’d just come out of ABBA Voyage — best show I’ve ever seen. Energy, precision, joy. So naturally, we thought, let’s go to a Gordon Ramsay restaurant and keep the magic alive. Instead, it was like going from a West End theatre to watching paint dry in a bus station toilet.

We booked in advance, but when we arrived they told us our table wasn’t ready. Fine, maybe they were polishing the cutlery with unicorn tears. Nope — they just left us standing there like lemons while random walk-ins were whisked straight to their tables. I’m pretty sure if I’d turned up with a Deliveroo bag, I’d have been seated faster.

We ordered drinks at the bar. Barman says, “We’ll bring them to your table.” Spoiler: they didn’t. Ten minutes later I saw them sitting on the bar like abandoned puppies, so I walked over and adopted them myself. Service charge? Mate, I was the waiter.

Want a wine list? Apparently, they only have about three in circulation, and they were all on holiday at other tables. Meanwhile, the groups who’d just walked in were on their second bottle. By the time the list reached us, half the wines were “not available.” Honestly, their wine cellar must look like the aftermath of a student house party: one dusty bottle of house red and a suspicious half-drunk rosé.

Beer? Lager’s run out. Manager arrives with two pints of IPA, says, “These are on me.” Mate, I wouldn’t wash my socks in IPA. Sent them back and begged for bottled beer like it was contraband.

Starters arrive eventually — they were fine, nothing life-changing. Meanwhile, our walk-in rivals were already onto desserts. At this point I felt like I was trapped in a social experiment: “How long can a pre-booked table survive on neglect before ordering a Domino’s?”

Main courses: three roast beefs and one steak & ale pie. The pie looked like it had been microwaved straight from a petrol station fridge. The roast beef? Came with one vegetable. One. I’ve had more variety in hospital food.

By now our nemesis tables had eaten, paid, left, and probably gone clubbing. We just wanted coffee and the bill. The bill arrived. The coffee didn’t.

When I asked to remove the service charge, the waiter said “Yes sir” in the exact tone of a man who has given up on life.

Final thoughts:

ABBA Voyage: Dancing queens. 10/10.

Bread Street Kitchen: Waiting queens. 0/10.

Would I go back? I’d rather eat a Pot Noodle in a...

What a disappointment! As we had 5 days in London we decided to try one of the Gordon Ramsey restaurants, Bread Street Kitchen. My first impression when we entered was - that we might be in the wrong place, but a nice pizza waiter pointed upstairs. When we arrived we liked the airy area, with many seats and an open kitchen. Unfortunately, we were seated in the back area, where two other tables were still full of dirty dishes from previous customers. Then the waitress came and we ordered a drink of beer and white wine. The wine was fantastic and I liked it so much. When the waitress came for the meal order with an angry face. We ordered a Potted Devon crab and Crispy duck salad and the waitress insisted that for crab we do need some sides and after being asked what she recommend she replied that fries will be ok. The dirty tables next to us are still not being cleaned up at this point. When meals arrived we were surprised by a crab as it tasted like being served from the can with no chef value at all. And also three big crumpets were too much along with fries. My partner asked the waitress why she was insisting on having another side where there were the big crumpets and she started to be more angry as before. I never seen in my life anything like this unprofessional lady. Nevertheless, we ordered another glass of wine (which never came). Unfortunately, the waitress started to be more angry acting like a child, throwing other guests' menu lists on the table and even talking back. A lady who was sitting at another table asked us what was going on and we all agreed that this is not what to expect from the famous Gordon Ramsey business. At the end, a Manager came to take the plates from our table and I asked her about this waitress. She apologized for her and even offered us a glass of prosecco on the house, but honestly with such a bad customer approach will you accept? No way! Overall - please avoid this place!!! There are other nice restaurants in the surrounding area where they might not have the big Gordon Ramsey name on the door, but will you treat them as real customers? Service makes memories and I would rather delete this experience from my...