Mama Fifi — Restaurant in London

First time after this place rebranded to Mama Fifi. In summary wasn't that great as it was before (Botanica) . I think they are trying to get hold of the business. Maybe will revisit in 4 to 5 months later when it's more stabilized.

Pros: Food presentation is amazing. Loved the pizza and brioche starter bread.

Cons Cutlery especially knife is not fit for purpose. It's a fight to cut the pizza bread with a basic breakfast knife. Very annoying. And they don't have other options. Next time bring your own knife. Cutting pizza with that knife makes the whole table and everything on top shaking to collapse.

Some food was very tasteless (penne pasta) and other had very sour taste ( Bolognese sauce).

There are plenty of staff but not easy to get hold of someone. You almost need to beg.

With 2 portions of fries , there wasn't any ketchup or sauce served. When asked , we got a small 5ml sauce in a little container which obviously wasn't enough. And you need to beg for more.

Our drinks didn't get served even after food arrived. Needed to ask waiters. Although restaurant wasn't busy, maybe 30% only.

We asked for a clean spaghetti with nothing on top, confirmed by waiter too. However we got a plate of spaghetti with a lot of vegetables on top which was not expected and my daughter spent time to remove those. Also she didn't like the sour Bolognese sauce. Plus there wasn't any spoon to...

I joined my friends late after getting held back at work, and staff could not understand that I wanted to sit with them as they told me there was nobody waiting. I saw them myself and sat with them.

My friends had already been served and my order was on the table. One of my friends was not eating because they were nervous that the order was wrong (they are gluten intolerant and it looked like typical pasta, in addition to which it was a different pasta type entirely). They had asked the wait staff to check but were reassured repeatedly with no check. My friends said that staff had not written down or checked the order when taking it so they were worried that a mistake would easily get through.

After a brief test of my food we established that my (vegan) order was in fact gluten free. It felt like the restaurant had just grouped any/all dietary requirements and allergens into one homogenous blob, and it didn't feel in the way they handled the error that they respected any requirements. There are very few vegan options and what was there was disappointing. Labelling was poor. Atmosphere was fine.

After the meal two of us had food poisoning for a couple of days.

Wouldn't go back.

Real shame as Botannika used to be pretty good and the vegan french toast in the...

I’m leaving this review not only because this was genuinely the worst dining experience of my life, but because I feel I owe it to people. DO NOT DINE HERE. Food was truly catastrophic (picture attached). This was allegedly a frittata, ordered by my partner. I ordered salmon and scrambled eggs, which weirdly came without toast. The salmon was sour for reasons I don’t want to dwell on. For my own wellbeing, I didn’t finish it. I asked my server for toast on the side which took a cool 20 mins or so to arrive, by which time my (greasy) scrambled eggs were stone cold. We sent the diabolical frittata back (look at it, you would too), and ordered eggs on toast instead, which frankly were not much better.

The service was poor - it was our server’s first day so I empathise with him, but he wasn’t shadowing anyone and frankly seemed to have been thrown in the deep end. Even still, when we were done choking down our food, we had to sit with the aftermath for like a half hour before it was cleared away. When all was said and done, the bill came to almost 40 pounds. For an americano, orange juice, eggs on toast, and salmon with eggs on toast. The orange juice alone was £5.50. I think you’d getter cheaper prices at the goddamn ritz....