Luca — Restaurant in London

Bitterly disappointing.

We attended for a birthday meal with a lot of excitement, after all, Luca’s reputation is well known and a Michelin star is typically well earned. From the moment of arrival, our experience did not resemble that that you would expect from a Michelin establishment. In fact, it was pretty average .

Firstly, the service was poor. When sat at the quiet bar, I waited 15 mins to be served after struggling to get attention. When I did, the service lacked a smile or effort to talk me through the menu. This was repeated when we sat down in the main restaurant, a member of our party was running 30 minutes late, however, while waiting we didn’t receive any attention to order drinks or some starters/nibbles. This in spite of two empty glasses on the table. Again, we did not have the menu explained to us until we requested, however, once asked the waiter did give a knowledgable walkthrough.

He was well mannered, dressed and professional whilst engaging with us but him and staff did lack attentiveness. When we left out the door, nobody thanked us for our visit or said good night. It just lacked that personal touch that you expect from a premium restaurant.

As for the food, there were a couple of good dishes including the parmesan fries, the aubergine dish and chocolate mousse but none of the pasta dishes hit the spot. They were rich and creamy but lacked any real flavour and punch. All were sauced based and lacked a pairing such as veg or nuts to create texture and variation to each mouthful. The salads were tasty but again, now factor and easily replicable at home. A redeeming factor was the bread and chili oil which was delicious but I should not be leaving a Michelin restaurant with the bread as a stand out dish.

The bar and restaurant ambience is great, with a sleek modern feel. However, the toilets are quite worn with paint pealing off the wall and a real lack of luxury. It felt more industrial/brewery than Michelin restaurant.

As whole, this wasn’t a bad dining experience. It was fine. But you don’t pay for fine, at £100 a head a with a 15% service charge, you deserve fantastic. Yes 2.5% is only marginally above average but it is also a bold statement that that says ‘our service is superior’. Therefore, you can’t come in below...

Whilst the food was lovely, tasty and made well, the service was seriously lacking.

Upon being seated, the waitress assigned to our table asked if I would like to order a drink. I didn't even have a drinks menu (or food menu for that matter). This indicated to me that the waitress was not well trained or lacked awareness from the get go. For a Michelin star restaurant, it was rather surprising.

Food and drink was ordered thereafter, but the next problem came when asking for more bread for the table. We had to ask 3 times, to different wait staff, before we finally received it. Again, for a Michelin star restaurant, this was surprising.

The candle blew out on the table at one point, and I asked our waitress to re-light it if they could. That didn't happen until some 15 minutes later when she approached the table after remembering.

The food itself was lovely, and we really enjoyed what the chef's did, enjoying the monkfish as a starter, the truffle pasta for a main as well as the highlight, being the steak.

When it came time to paying the bill, we asked our waitress to remove the service charge, and then split the bill to pay. She returned after having removed the service charge with the new bill in hand, charged the first person but then presented me the terminal where I wasn't able to see the amount she had entered, and I paid. After checking the amount that popped up on my phone, it didn't look right, and I realised she had charged the entire service charge. Ridiculous - I was frustrated and annoyed as this was explicitly asked not to be included, and the fact the waitress came back with a new receipt and still tried to charge the full amount to me was insulting.

I had to go up to the person at the till, and let them know what had happened, where they asked if everything went well. I let them know that the food was great but the service was extermely disappointing. They didn't even ask why.

The waitress we had was clearly not ready to perform the job of waiting and lacked customer service and communication skills. It is a shame that the service let down the experience so badly, as the food was delightful, but do not expect normal levels of service here let alone Michelin star...

We had dinner here as a party of five and I would sum it up as: lovely setting, nice food, okay service, uncomfortable pricing.

We had requested when we booked to be seated on the terrace – we were told this would be fine as long as there were no private events in that space. When we arrived, we were seated indoors – but there was no private event on the terrace. Not a biggie and it was a busy Friday night so we didn’t mention it.

We had the £95/head chef’s menu as I had been bought this as a gift voucher. As soon as we ordered, our (admittedly lovely) waitress told us that “everyone” orders their parmesan fries before their meal. The fries were tasty, but in hindsight the early upsell was jarring.

No one told us what was on the chef’s menu – when we mentioned that this was making it tricky to pick a wine, we were blithely told that we could pay an additional £75/head for a pairing. We politely declined, and the sommelier seemed a bit put out at helping us find a bottle of wine for under £80. No one offered to tell us about the menu.

Throughout the meal, staff replaced our water without checking first – we found out at the end that that had been charged at £1.50/bottle despite no one mentioning this or asking. Just to be clear, it wasn’t sealed bottled or mineral water: they were reusable bottles filled from the house soda stream/taps.

When we got the bill, a 15% service charge was added rather than the standard (for London) 12.5% and it’s unclear if staff actually receive all of this. They also hadn’t accounted for one chef’s menu having been pre-paid despite this having been flagged twice before – we mentioned it a third time and it was duly removed.

On the plus side, the food was good (if not life-changing) and they put my friend at ease about her severe nut allergy. We also spoke to a second sommelier later on who was more engaged and enthusiastic.

The total bill was just under £1000 for 5 people – if you’re going to charge that much, it should be a completely seamless experience. I’ve paid that amount before for a really special meal and not resented a penny. I can’t say that was...