La Poule Au Pot — Restaurant in London

Small family restaurant - "cute deco", but judging by the other restaurants maybe a little bit old fashioned but this worked for us... Being very a little bit French myself (even if not French born) and a very snobbish "foodie" I was very curious about the food - but the reviews and atmosphere comments made me book the restaurant for the night I proposed to my girlfriend... (I did not propose in the restaurant but we went there after). The service was cordial and pleasant – all the staff was French as expected and as I speak fluent French I had no issues with the menu being in French (found that quite cool as we were in a French restaurant). In a very French way the staff will check on you maybe once- but then let you enjoy the food without constantly checking if the food is OK or trying to oversell wine during your meal (bonus point on my books). The starters were to our view the down point of the meal - I had the snails and despite the fact they were "meaty" (as they should) they were not seasoned correctly - when you have a sauce that is basically butter, garlic and parsley you should not get it wrong - and by the way - I have eaten all my life snails- nd adult portion is a dozen (12) like the space on the plate - I got only 10 in this restaurant!! My fiancée had the salmon (Paupiette de saumon) - and on her own comments "not seasoned right - you make this much better" - if fact when I tasted it you could taste the crabmeat - but again under seasoned and too cold - not what you would expect. At this stage I was a bit worried - it is not a cheap restaurant - we had just got engaged and I wanted the meal to be special... so I waited for the main courses with some apprehension... For main course I had chosen the “Magret de canard aux foie gras poele” (Duck breast with cooked foie gras) and my fiancée the “Pintade aux pommes et au Calvados” (Guinea Fowl with apples and Calvados) – now here the explosion of flavours started! We asked for some green beans, spinach and sauté potatoes as side dishes The Duck breast was cooked pink as I requested (some restaurants refuse to do so in the UK), seasoned perfectly and the foie gras was cooked amazingly – a truly amazing culinary experience! The guinea Fowl was tender, yet perfectly off the bone and the sweetness of the apples and the generous Calvadosportion on the sauce made it truly extraordinary. The vegetables were seasoned right – cooked to perfection (no under cooked beans in this restaurant) and complimented the meal perfectly! I chose a red to go with our meal – the Vacqueyras 2010/11 went perfectly well with both dishes and complemented the rich sauces – as any wine in a UK restaurant was expensive (£35) – but that is a cross we have to bear in this country. After the generous portions we had on our starter and main course we were only able to share a dessert and e decided to go with a French classic – the crème brulee… and I am so pleased we did so! It was as a Crème brulee should b, but in a very generous portion! So very glad we shared as we were able to enjoy it much more this way. Overall a truly great meal – let down by the starters and if it would have not been the case I would have given this...

We ate here recently for a birthday celebration and while the food is good, we were not impressed by the service.

Make no mistake, the food very enjoyable, the onion soup and cassoulet I had being some of the best I have had in London. However I think that if you are not a regular you will definitely have to wait for your food.

On arrival we did ask to sit outside but were informed that all of the tables outside were already allocated so we were seated inside by the window. The food menus were already on the table but we had to ask for the wine list several times.

We were then left alone for a long time while attempting to flag down someone to even take a drinks order, let alone food. Even when we did manage to stop someone, we were told that she would get someone else as she wasn't responsible (being near the window we saw her both take orders, deliver food and clear tables outside).

Our starters arrived, and they were good, the onion soup being wonderfully rich and the tart also very tasty. We were then left with our plates until the main courses showed up, but they cleared our starters and took away our cutlery so we then had to wait for someone to finally bring new ones, after we stopped them as they walked past.

The Cassoulet was fantastic, easily the best dish we had, the coq au vin and the poule au pot both being good, but not excellent. A request for another glass of wine from a flagged down passing waiter needed to be asked for twice, with the original server coming back after the drink was already delivered to ask which one we wanted.

No one checked on us during our meal, once we were finished we sat there with our empty plates for a long time. We considered dessert before deciding that we would rather have it elsewhere. On the way to the washroom, we requested that the bill be brought over. After 20 minutes we got up, put on our jackets and walked to the payment station to pay.

We decided to remove the optional service charge, as the service had been terrible, we don't do this, my family are not the kind of people who do this on any kind of regular basis. The manager who took our payment said that they were busy as their excuse. However, we know where all the staff were, they were outside being very helpful to those sitting there who were being treated like friends and regulars. All of the staff members who said that "that wasn't their responsibility" were outside doing exactly those roles. They had a fantastic ability to ignore us on the few occasions they came to our part of the restaurant when they walked past our table even though, as others have said, it is quite a cramped restaurant.

Good food but I will not return. There are better places where I would choose to...

Extremely underwhelming experience here. La Poule Au Pot is going for a romantic French cottage kind of vibe, which it does achieve fairly well, but other than that, it's really disappointing service and underwhelming food.

The starters are by far the best parts of the menu, the onion soup and pâté were genuinely very nice and rich in flavour. The desserts we tried (crème brûlée and apple tart) were okay, but nothing special. The mains were absolutely the worst part: we had the namesake dish, La Poule Au Pot, and the Coq au Vin. The Poule au Pot, for the dish the restaurant is named after, was a little embarrassing. It's basically a chicken and vegetable soup that, quite honestly, was on the same level of quality you'd expect from a pre-made soup in a supermarket. Also, between that and the Coq au Vin, both dishes were extremely salty. I don’t know whether the saltiness was intentional or not, but either way, I can’t imagine the chef tasted the dishes before sending them out like that. Anyone who's had any kind of soup would have been able to tell it was far too salty.

There is bread and butter that’s complimentary, but the bread was stale, definitely a day old and not freshly baked. The fact that a French restaurant can’t even offer fresh bread is, frankly, a bit embarrassing.

The service was bizarre. We were there for two hours and were served by 7-8 different waiters. Not one of them was actually responsible for looking after our table, and the waiters kept overlapping each other, so none of them seemed sure what had been said to us or whether we had already ordered. Within the first 30 minutes, three different waiters asked if we had been told what the specials were. One waiter would ask if we’d like to order drinks when the previous one hadn’t even given us the menu yet. One waiter gave us the menu, and quite literally 20 seconds later, another came by to ask if we had decided, clearly unaware that we had just received it. This just seems like a chaotic way to manage table service, and I really don’t understand what the philosophy behind this method of serving is.

All in all, we walked away after paying close to £150 for two people and got food that was underwhelming, bordering on outright bad, and chaotic service from waiters who were clearly not invested in making sure we had a good experience. And how could they be? We saw each waiter once maybe twice, and then never again, because a new waiter had taken their place.

Just take your money elsewhere, what a...