Foley's — Restaurant in London

Foley’s is a slick and intimate Asian restaurant in Fitzrovia. Serving up a menu of Asian inspired dishes, cocktails and sake we were very excited about dinner!

We loved the look of the cocktail menu full of flavourful ingredients. We went for the crisp and refreshing Foleys Gin & Tonic (£9) with gin, lemon, grapefruit and pink peppercorns. We also tried the Big Panda (£9.50) with Appleton white rum, sake, lemongrass & cucumber syrup, yuzu sour, topped with soda. Served in a fun tall panda glass and popping with flavour this was a real favourite.

The menu is split into bits and bobs (small plates/starters), salads, meat and fish and noodle soups. We tried to go for a little bit of everything and ended up with a table full of the following:

ginger calamari with ginger, coriander £(8) panko prawn, chilli lime dressing(£8) prawn pomelo, peanuts, dried coconut, chilli coriander on shiso leaf (£7) gyoza vegetable, soya wasabi (£7) somtam, green papaya salad (£8) grilled seabream, isaan style herbal marination, cooked in banana leaf, chilli lime (£17)

It was genuinely hard to pick a favourite as we hugely enjoyed every dish. The calamari just melted in yout mouth and we loved the hum of ginger and the panko prawn was incredibly juicy with the crispiest of coatings.

The prawn pomelo wrapped in the shiso leaf had a slightly bitter kick and was a burst of flavours. We loved the beautiful velvety soft pastry of the gyoza’s and could have easily had more! The somtam is quite fiery (we were warned) but we managed to almost finish it as the flavours were delicious and sharp.

These dishes were all smaller plates and we ordered the seabream as a main to share. It did not disappoint, arriving beautifully fragrant to the table wrapped in banana leaf. The fish was penetrated to the core with flavour and was so tender. We would highly recommend this as a main – it was sublime.

Foley’s is a lovely Asian restaurant in Fitzorvia for unpretentious food that is popping with flavour. We loved the creative dishes that are easily made for sharing and the delicious cocktails The laid back vibe of the place fuses great quality with friendly service and chatty staff that are clearly enthused about the menu. If you love Asian flavours and fancy trying some creative dishes with spot on flavours we would highly recommend a visit. They also have a set lunch menu for only £10...

THE PERFECT MEDIA LUVVIES LUNCHTIME STOP....

Foley's is within the Media Mile and a few minutes of sitting here, you'll have no doubt about the types of conversations that will surround you.

BBC execs complaining about commissions, film-makers pitching ideas.

They're all here for a quick (long by most other people's standards) lunch and at these prices, on expenses too no doubt.

I was to dine with a friend but they had to cancel last minute.

This meant I was little more focussed on my surroundings than normal, but the loudness of the discussions surrounding me would have intervened even if my guest had been there.

Foley Street is a little off the beaten track. But the venue is light, buzzy and inviting.

If you like that Fitzrovia media buzz, then you'll really love this place.

I do and I did.

The service was perfectly fine, relaxed but totally adequate.

I throughly enjoyed the food.

Starters constituted the complimentary popped Sesame Seeds & the Indonesian Peanut Crackers with Tomato Sambai, crunchy & spicy combined (pleasantly surprised by the heat of the spices in the Sambai) at £3.50.

The main was the Cornflake Crusted Popcorn Chicken (with Pickled Shimeji, Endive & Chorizo) £9 interesting mix of flavours and textures that overall felt a little too complicated for the palate.

Dessert was the rather misleadingly named Fatboy Elvis (Warm Chocolate Chip Banana cake, banana cream, peanut honeycomb, bacon crack and strawberry jam) as the expectation was a gargantuan dessert and what arrived was more akin to Haute Cuisine (£6.00).

I was tempted to go for the charity offering for #CookForSyria (£2 going to Unicef out of every order) but my taste buds outweighed my moral obligations on this occasion.

The bill of £20 for 3 course can't be deemed particularly excessive, but with the portion sizes and the like, you do feel a £10 or £15 lunch deal is missing from the menu.

But throw in drinks and then you're easily looking like a £100 for lunch for two, but as I said earlier, if the companies paying, why not?

This is a fun place, that is definitely worth your time, if you're in the area, like the media buzz and the eclectic tastes.

I'll definitely be back... when someone...

My friends and I went here for the £25 bottomless brunch for my birthday. When we got there we were told we could only have 1 of the options of alcohol for the whole 2 hours (mimosa's, prosecco or Bloody Mary's) - we chose mimosa's. I felt this was very misleading as prior to booking, all advertisements for this brunch said 'bottomless Mimosa's, Prosecco AND Bloody Mary's' when really it should say 'bottomless Mimosa's, Prosecco OR Bloody Mary's'. Anyway, we just went on with our choice of mimosa's as we all liked them so didn't mind too much. The restaurant was pretty empty the whole time we were there yet it took at least 10-15 mins each time we ordered another drink for them to be made and brought to us - obviously something they do purposely to make sure you don't actually drink that much. Each round of mimosa's came in the smallest wine glasses which were filled only half way so it was such bad value for money. After only an hour of our 2 hour bottomless brunch, we ordered another round and the waiter was genuinely annoyed we'd just ordered more drinks when we had a whole hour left? He stormed off and said 'I need to check you can still have these' as if were being unreasonable for wanting to use the full 2 hours? We were all expecting the atmosphere to be fun and bubbly but it was dead, the staff have zero personality or people skills! Once we had got the bill, we refused to pay for the service charge as we were all disappointed in the experience. The general manager made a fuss and didn't even apologise for the service we had received, she was more bothered about missing out of 20% tips (shock). This bottomless brunch is NOT worth your money! The only good thing about the visit was the food, everything else was a complete let down and I definitely would not recommend! There's plenty other bottomless brunch options around London which are 10 times more fun and worth your money...