Maremma — Restaurant in London

I'd heard good things about this place, so was excited to experience it for myself on a nice Friday summer evening with my girlfriend. Sadly however, it was a terrible experience and I would not recommended Maremma to anyone.

We started off relatively well, the buratta was fine, if not a little boring, but the Tuna tartare was pretty good. However, it's was downhill from here. The waiter was nice enough, although a little insistent that I try the quail, so fine - I ordered the quail and my partner the hake. Both dishes arrive soon afterwards, but after I cut into the quail it's clear it's still raw and unless I want to spend the next few hours in the bathroom I probably shouldn't eat it... So, I ask the waiter, who confirms it's not been cooked properly and says that they'll redo the dish. OK, so mistakes happen and it's not ideal but it's not the end of the world either, and luckily I checked it before eating.

About 20 minutes go by, which means that my partner has already finished her food by the time my dish is ready again. The waiter is doing a good job all things considered and mentions that they'll do something on the bill to reflect the bad experience so far, which is nice and what you'd expect from a good restaurant.

We share one desert, which was nice (but a little overpriced in my opinion for a small lemon gelato at £9). We ask for the bill, which takes about 30 mins to come for some reason. When it arrives, I'm a little surprised to see that there's been no acknowledgement of what's happened and we've been charged full price, even though my food was brought out raw and we had to eat separately. Two different waiting staff try to take payment at this point, each of which I ask if they were able to do anything as was previously mentioned and given what happened.

Eventually a young man comes over to take payment and explains he's the manager. He asks me if I ate the food, to which I say yes but only on the second attempt and that we were forced to eat separately, so it wasn't exactly a good experience and since one of the staff had mentioned they could do something on the bill it's a bit strange that this now isn't the case. He replies quite rudely to say that his staff don't have the authority to make any decisions like that and since I ate the food, I needed to pay for it.

So, I pay for the food in full, which is over £100 for a pretty dismal experience but I'm not about to argue with a restraunt manager who doesn't seem to understand customer service. Quite frankly it's about the principle and if he'd have offered even a free glass of wine or some other small token I'd be happy, but for him to assert that somehow I'd had a good dining experience and be quite confrontational about it is very poor. Hopefully he was just having an off day, but it's very disappointing to see, and with a wealth of other good places to eat in London I'd do yourself a favour and go...

We have been looking forward to eating in this restaurant for a long time. We live a five minute walk away and have known the restaurant from passing by. The menu had always interested us. The bookings are popular but we were pleased to get an early dinner slot. We ordered two antipasti, two primi, one secondi, two desserts and a bottle of wine. Our bill was £170. The first antipasto, a beef carpaccio dish was nice and the sauce associated with it was well-balanced. The second was an octopus dish with a chickpea-based mash. The octopus was drowned in the wet mash, and the balance of flavours were lost. The mash tasted over salted and killed the octopus.

The first primi we had was a standout: seabass ragu. The stock was delicious and the fish was well cooked. The second primi was a great disappointment. We suspect there was an error in the kitchen. The pasta was not salted and the sauce was the same. We love wild boar and were saddened to see that it was not well seasoned. We felt the need to add excess Parmesan to bring it to the right level. It was the dish we were looking forward to the most and it was the greatest disappointment. The secondo was the beef tagliata which was well cooked, and a nice piece of beef. The beef would have benefited from more olive oil at service. For £25 this is probably the expected price in London though the portion felt small. The desserts were enjoyable but nothing outstanding for the price (£8 & £9). The wine was very nice at £48 a bottle for vermentino.

The service was fine. Overall for the price of £170 for two people including wine one might of expected a better quality of cooking. We really appreciate restaurants trying to make a difference by purchasing high-quality ingredients and putting them together. We understand that Marema is busy and caters for many customers, but overall we felt that they missed the mark on at least half the dishes this evening. We put a high bar on the restaurant given the price and overall felt the the food was fine. To be honest we did leave the restaurant feeling hungry. As a result, we will not be going back for now and feel that other places in Brixton will be worth trying...

We were a table of six and were given two menus between us. We had to wait for quite a while to place our order for drinks and although we ordered food at the same time, we had to wait for quite some time before being served. The antipasti were ok, but a little disappointing (and small!) given the price. My wife and daughter both ordered the same pasta dish which arrived on one plate and was put in front of my wife without any explanation that the plate was to be shared. After a while we kind of worked it out, not least of all because our daughter's dish did not seem to be forthcoming. We eventually had to ask for side dishes so that they could share the pasta. When we queried this we were given a very off-hand reply of "it's a sharing plate"! Pity this was not made clear beforehand, because in the meantime the pasta was cold and also too al dente to be truly enjoyed. We skipped dessert but were not offered coffe. My daughter went to the toilet when we asked for the bill and found that the toilet paper had ran out. She told a server at the bar. I went five minutes later and a chap came out and he told me there was no paper! After paying the bill, my wife then went to the toilet and there was still no paper. By then I would say that 15 minutes had gone by! It took some time to pay the bill because my wife had booked on line and had been asked to put down a security deposit. When the bill was presented no one seemed to know if the security deposit had been taken and therefore needed to be deducted from the bill. This was eventually cleared up following a phone call to someone who did know. All in all a disappointing experience. We had high expectations beforehand and specifically chose your restaurant to celebrate our...