Lost Society — Restaurant in London

Near the newly designated landmark regeneration area of Nine Elms sits the Lost Angel & Gaslight Grill on Battersea Park Road. The surrounding area doesn’t exactly befit the quality of this bar, but it’s what inside that counts. The Lost Angel offers the comfortable surroundings of the bar, restaurant and the excellent back garden area – ideal for summer.

As you’d expect from a bar that is aiming for quality we were greeted by an amiable waiter who led us to a table and walked us through the key features of the menu before tempting us with a pre-dinner cocktail at only £5 per drink (Happy hour rate). Both were expertly crafted and superbly tasty. It’s also worth mentioning the rest of the drinks menu is well rounded, with Ales, Ciders and a wide range of wines available.

The Gaslight grill menu itself is divided into two discernible parts, with the first page taken purely by the starters & mains and the second, which is largely taken up by a vast array of sauces to accompany any steak selection. There must be about 20 of them on offer, ranging from the classic peppercorns, or Béarnaise through to booze heavy ones involving rum and stout. The starters on offer have a nice range of fresh rustic and seafood selections – We went for the ‘Pan-fried Wood-Pigeon breast, hazelnuts, golden beetroot, foraged mushrooms with truffle oil’ & the ‘Baked Crab served in its shell with a parsley and parmesan crust’.

Whilst waiting for our starters we heard a band start to play in the front bar area – an unexpected bonus with the waiter telling us “every Thursday is band night”. So with the cool rhythm and blues atmosphere set, the starters arriving promptly, the red and white wines by the glass plus the food smelling scrumptious we dove straight in. The pigeon was properly cooked, rare, lean, beautifully gamey, and was well complemented by its accompaniments. The subtle crab meat was slightly overpowered by the parmesan but nonetheless enjoyable and every morsel was devoured.

For the mains we had to hit the steak menu given the sauces on offer, so a rare 350g Rump Steak with Bacon Jus, Smoky Bowmore whiskey, and Cep and Cognac sauces was chosen, plus a side of baby spinach and shallots. Now, I wasn’t being greedy here; you do in fact get three sauces included with any steak selection, so unless you have a serious objection to sauce then you’ll definitely be ‘sauce-happy’. The other main chosen was a recommendation from our waiter, with the newly added Orange and pink pepper marinated Halibut on Jerusalem Artichoke and purple sprouting Broccoli.

As the band knocked out the tunes, the mains arrived in style. The steak was perfectly rare, and each sauce did its job but the Bowmore whiskey was a firm favourite The real triumph though was the marinaded Halibut. Succulent white fish, flaking off and infused with the orange and pepper. Not a combination of flavours you’d ordinarily think would go together but in practise a well thought through dish. The broccoli was tasty, and the Jerusalem artichokes were delicious I’m told (I didn’t get a look in as they went so quickly).

Moving onto the desserts, we were admirably full so just went for a shared dessert – nevertheless we went for a slice of richness going for the Sticky Toffee pudding – rich it was but damn it was good. Sweet, tantalisingly moreish and ‘plate-lick-able’.

To say it is pub, or even gastro pub fair is doing it a massive injustice; the food is so enjoyable all around. Some pub / bars try to do too many things; but the Lost Angel manages to juggle a fine bar knocking out great cocktails, plus house the Gaslight Grill in its four walls producing a high standard of culinary flair at a reasonable cost. It’s well worth a visit, especially on Thursdays. I haven’t been to try the Roasts yet but have heard good things and so that’s next on the list in the...

Didn’t have a good experience here. Booked dinner on a Saturday night for a birthday. At time of booking was told we would have the table for 1.5 hrs so planned the night around that. It took 2 hours just for the food to arrive. Over 20mins to just get a menu after asking multiple times, 40mins for drinks and an hour just to order the food! They said the kitchen was too busy to take the order earlier. We didn’t have a very good table, basically the middle of the dancefloor with people stood around us. At one point we were moved to another table and given some Prosecco for the inconvenience. A few minutes later we were moved back to the original table! The waitress told us we wouldn’t be charged for the food due to the wait. However, when the bill came all the food was on and the waitress denied saying otherwise. A pretty intended argument ensued where the best we were offered was 25% off. The waitress and both managers did not care one bit that we didn’t enjoy it, or that we had missed the booking at the next bar and were charged a no show fee for that. We had even put cake in the kitchen for the birthday but they refused to serve it to us. Once we had finished eating we were told to stand up as the tables were being cleared away. No offer of dessert or time to finish our drinks. The only positive I have to say is the food was nice when it eventually arrived. Management do not care about customer service at all. All they’re bothered about is making as much cash as possible and looking good on Instagram with their love island guests. I understand businesses are struggling post covid, and with temporary staff but there is no excuse for the extremely poor service we received. If your kitchen is going to be overwhelmed then don’t accept so many bookings and walk ins. I feel sorry for the staff working there, it can’t be a good working environment. The whole experience was unpleasant. It’s not nice having to argue for a measly 25% discount given the circumstances. I would echo the other reviews which say to avoid this place when it’s busy, they are not equipped to manage a busy bar/restaurant.

Update: It is clear management do not care and continue to lie about the delay. 1 hour to order, 1 hour for food to arrived equals 2 hours. There has been no apology offered for the cake that was kept by the restaurant but bought by us. Given we were charged a no show fee for the next booking, a 25% discount is not reasonable. The managers in this restaurant are rude and condescending. They have no customer service training and cannot cope with complaints and a busy restaurant. Fine for a few drinks, not for a meal or...

One of the worst outing experiences in London - almost swallowed a glass shard in my cup, food some of the worst I’ve had at a restaurant, horrendously overpriced and small portioned, staff was overall quite slow, most seemed confused, and very inexperienced. The name ‘Lost Society’ seems to be more of a statement about the state of this place and those who go there. That this place manages a 4.1* average is outrageous - my experience aside, this should have a 3* average at best.

It was only lunch and the place wasn’t very busy yet but plenty of staff. The bottomless option is only redeeming factor of this place. I asked for a food recommendation, got the steak sandwich, and it was half a sandwich with few (bad) chips, large pool of oil built up under the sandwich, bread was stale, beef overcooked, etc etc. very disappointing.

Took my first glass of something to drink (water) and almost swallowed a small glass shard. In a friendly, smiling way I mentioned and showed them it only for the manager to came over and in a panic insist that the glasses were polished and this couldn’t have happened. It was phrased as if we were being told it hadn’t happened at all, which was quite odd. They apologised and just kept on (no extra care, attention, etc).

My friends’ vegan burgers weren’t vegan and the server simply told them they wouldn’t be made vegan rather than providing any other options (few alternatives anyway). So, they said they would go buy replacement vegan ingredients nearby (of which they were notably cheap in quality, saying worst vegan burgers they’ve had and left half unfinished, enormously overpriced at £16 for hardly any chips too).

While £25pp (£20pp before noon) for 1.5hrs of unlimited prosecco is somewhat reasonable, everything else about this made it hard to fathom or enjoy. The whole reason to go out on a premium for bottomless is to enjoy the atmosphere, the freedom, service, food, etc. This place had none of that, so we would have been better off drinking at home.

In future, if this were suggested, I’d rather buy a bottle with a meal deal and drink on the street outside. Will avoid this place like the...