Fiume — Restaurant in London

My wife brought us here to celebrate my birthday yesterday. I already had the chance to dine here and I got contrasting feeling about it, but I was happy to give it a second chance as I really love the surroundings. Unfortunately, all my feelings were confirmed yesterday.

There is a lot to like about Fiume: the location is lovely, the ingredients are good and fresh and there is definitely some standards here (the Parma ham seemed freshly cut, the bufala tasted fresh and milky, the fried zucchini was ok, my cacio and Pepe was tasty but groomy and dry but my wife seafood linguine was good and the babà with limoncello was also flavoury); the service is nice and friendly. The interiors are good looking and clean even though very much British and very little Italian. Also, having a glass of wine which doesn’t taste like coming from a bottle opened one month ago, in London, is something to truly appreciate. Overall, good vibes.

The main problem of this place is not in the standards, but in his formula: the food is a very limited menu of basic Italian grandma cuisine level served at the price of a fine dining experience. This wouldn’t be bad per se, but for the price tag, there is nothing special in it, no ambition in the food offer, there is nothing in the menu which you could not experience if you get invited for dinner any Italian friend’s home with average cuisine knowledge and no culinary education whatsoever.

We paid £75 each for a 3 course meal; the starter was a very small platter of 2 (counted) slices of Parma ham and a little mozzarella, a small pasta plate, a dessert, a spritz and a 125 ml glass of wine. Is that enough? “In London, yes”, I would hear from everyone. But is that enough to leave you happy and satisfied?

Some little things elevate this place from many other restaurants in the surroundings. But anything good this place has built up in our evening crushed badly when they served a birthday platter with literally no cake on it. Despite I appreciated the gesture, I honestly couldn’t understand if this was a joke or not. I will allow the picture to speak for itself, and I hope everyone who sees it, including the owner, will be as embarrassed as I was.

Fiume suits a specific target: it’s a place that knows to be located in a surrounding where value for money is not interrogated, in a city which seems under the spell of being ok with decreasing quality and reducing portions for rising prices. How can people keep being happy about it is still a mistery to me. In such a contest, you need to do very little above the others to stand, and people will be happy to overpay for it, and that’s exactly where Fiume sits.

Did we have a good time? Yes. How was the food? Okay. Would I recommend it? No.

This formula can get you contented only until you travel and experience way better at 1/10 of the price. For the surroundings, you can enjoy them with a lovely walk for free. You don’t get charged for walking and breathing yet.

Otherwise, if this is not a problem, Fiume is the right place for you. Every restaurant has a signature dish that you will remember. Mine was a nice marble...

Complete disappointment for £50 pp and completely NOT Italian food if you taste it (although it might look like it’s Italian flavor), horrible service and low quality

First of all, we had to wait a long time at the reception until the host would come and serve us. The table we’ve gotten was not stable at all and was shaking from side to side, so we had to move everything by ourselves as it was extremely hard to catch the waiters attention. Even if some of them saw us, it felt like they were pretending they don’t see us.

Regarding the food. We ordered burrata and it was not good at all. The rocket salad was very harsh and strong , it was really hard to chew it.

Squid was ok, but the portion was so small.

All the starters did not have a look of the restaurant dish.

We had to wait a long time for the mains and after they arrived we were disappointed again

Pizza dough was burnt and was hard to chew. The internal ingredients were not tasty at all and there was no desire to finish it.

The crab pasta was also strange. The pasta was more like Asian noodles and the crab was very strange. The flakes of it had not a good texture. That could work for a salad, but not for pasta.

The waiter was trying to make us buy the bottled water. After I asked that we want to have two water, he asked me again like he did not understand to make us buy the water. At least we felt that.

Service charge was 13% (usually it’s 12-12,5%) and it feels it does not worth it at all.

Also the disabled wc was closed.

I’ve just noticed based on the other reviews and in our bill that they forcibly added £1 charity… that’s not polite at all to force people to pay for things they never asked… and obviously putting them in a situation when it’s bad to ask to remove the charity , which causes a pressure on people and their moral principles. Unlike the moral principles of this restaurant of forcing people to pay and putting in this...

Premise: I'm not looking for the usual copy-paste response you give to all negative reviews — please don't insult people's intelligence with generic replies.

We went to this place today for lunch without a reservation. We were five adults and a newborn. When we walked in, the restaurant was half empty — there was one large group and a few other tables taken, but at least 30 seats were clearly available. Despite that, the staff member told us there would be a 30-minute wait to be seated inside. How is that even possible with so many free tables?

He then told us we could sit outside if we didn’t want to wait — which we accepted, even with a newborn. We sat outside and waited about 10 minutes for menus, which we eventually had to go get ourselves. When it came time to order, the tall, shaved-head waiter was extremely rude, visibly annoyed, and treated us as if we didn’t belong there. He didn’t even mention the set menu — we only found out about it later when he offered it to the table next to us.

He was also about to walk away before even taking our drink orders. The overall attitude was dismissive and unwelcoming.

Back to the initial issue: we were told there was a 30-minute wait to sit inside, but for the full two hours we were there, the indoor dining area remained half empty. I strongly recommend the owner take a closer look at how the staff is handling customers. They’re literally turning people away or forcing them to sit in the cold, instead of seating them inside where there’s clearly space. We almost left, and in hindsight, we probably should have.

To be fair, the food was very good. But unfortunately, good food isn't enough when the service is this poor. For us, this experience was worth just 1 star. The service was unacceptable, and the place seems to be in serious need of better-trained and more...