La Ballerina – Italian Restaurant Covent Garden — Restaurant in London

Browsing Covent Garden, without having thought of booking a restaurant, we just turned up to many doors before this restaurant, but all fully booked, and La Ballerina luckily had a table for us! Nice atmosphere, and very well located at the heart of London West End.

Staff was friendly, and although the table was a bit too close to the others, it was not too bad, it is Covent Garden after all! :)

Menu choices were not extensive, and not many options for vegetarians, but we found a few, and you can ask, e.g. to not add the ham/bacon, etc to a certain dish. It is what we did, carbonara without the ham/bacon.

I'd give 5 stars had it not been for some of the food, which was not great. My veal was a little chewy, having ordered veal many times before, I know it can be absolutely soft and dissolving in your mouth. Also, my potatoes and broccoli looked good, but tasted not crispy or al dente, a taste of a little aged, potatoes mushy.

I know it is not easy to manage the flow of so many guests, in a central place like this, but I half expected, when you spend this type of £40ish per person on a meal, that you'd get a more gourmet food.

The veal sauce was a delight, and my friend tells me her carbonara without the ham, also great! And the banoffee pie as pudding was dreamy, wonderful!

So a good restaurant, that has room for...

I visited this restaurant with my partner for his birthday before our theatre show. Local restaurants had an hour queue and one of the staff outside the restaurant said that they served lovely food and we would not have to pay for the meal if it was unsatisfactory.

We waited over 90 mins to receive our main course (which was only pizza).

I ordered a gluten-free pizza, being gluten intolerant. The pizza arrived and the base was raw. I brought it to the attention of the manager, he apologised and said the kitchen would make another one. By the time my partner had finished his pizza (which was not very nice but we were both starving at this point) my new pizza had arrived. IT WAS RAW AGAIN!

I was not happy about ordering anything else, so we asked for the bill.

They had deducted my set-menu (starter, main, coffee) off the bill but not my partners. I think it is absolutely disgusting we were charged for our meal considering my partner had to eat alone, I waited almost 2 hours for my food in the end and I was almost poisoned twice!

I spoke the owner to explain how upset I was, and he was very rude, he did not care for anything I had to say.

I paid for the meal under duress. I will be reporting this establishment to the Food Standards Agency.

I wish we had just walked...

I wrote up this review after our visit but unfortunately it didn't post.

My daughter & I visited this resturant before a west-end show. The restaurant is very dated with tables very crowded. We ordered a margarita pizza £9.95, king prawns £8.95 and mixed salad £4.95. Our pizza was not freshly made, the dough was thick and not very Italian looking. My king prawns were pathetic, five well cooked prawns in a tastless sauce with teeny tiny salad leafs on side. The mixed salad was no better. It consisted of some salad leafs, two slices of cucumber, one slice of tomato and TWO large slices of lemon. No dressing. Very disappointing. The waitress was friendly, over heard her telling table next to us (was hard not to miss we were so close!) she is working here years. The worst experience was our visit to toilets. These were situated downstairs, through a small door in resturant. Each time door was open we caught a blade of cold air! There was a doorway leading outside to street which was open hence the realise for cold draught. The two ladies toilets and sink wash area was disgraceful. Cleaning and checkups badly needed, including a much needed refurbishment.

Sorry I eould not return nor recommend....