Melange Restaurant — Restaurant in London

⭐

I have frequented this restaurant very regularly over the last ten years and, every time, the food is exceptional. I have made some lovely memories in this place and it's dear to me.

This particular visit saw me sitting by the window. The waitress is lovely and recognised me even though I hadn't really visited in about a year. I ordered my usual English Breakfast with no milk. She brought me a little dish with sliced lemons without being asked. I love when the staff show attention to detail like that.

I ordered beef bourguignon which was very hearty. The beef was tender and everything in it just went so nicely together. Other dishes I would recommend is the duck breast with cherry liqueur sauce and the steaks (my favourite is the rib eye) which are done to perfection, especially when combined with truffle butter. The seasonal soups are always good and the bread platter with a trio of special butters are to die for - that's called the starter bread on the menu.

I had the seafood linguine (Linguine de Mare) every trip like clockwork for years but alas pasta doesn't agree with me these days, a reflection of my age and not the dish!

The decor of blue and wood and what appears to be stacked wine crates make you feel like you're in a little slice of Italy. The creme caramel was the best here but they've taken that off the menu, which is a shame. They used to have a screen that played old silent movies. I miss that too. But maybe that's a good thing there are no screens here. No matter how busy it gets here, it's never so loud that you can't hear yourself speak.

Mélange is such a unique and beautiful restaurant with great character and professional staff that go the extra mile and are genuinely warm and inviting that it receives the Conscious Humaning's Star...

Summary - average food, expensive for what it was, pretty dismal service which ruined the experience.

Food - Starters were really nice, the mains were okay but nothing special. The waitress omitted to mention that the mains don’t come with any veg/side items - just meat, so we missed out on ordering accompaniments. Pretty pricey for what it was. Mains were at or above the £20 mark, but bear in mind that it’s just meat and you’ll need to order sides.

Experience - fairly poor unfortunately. We had booked for a group of four, but were sat on a six seater table. Shortly after being seated, a staff member came to take one of the spare chairs - shame this couldn’t have happened before we were seated as it meant we had to get back up again to shuffle round, but not a big deal - we moved our coats to the other spare chair instead and settled down again. Much later into our meal while we were in the middle of our mains, the waitress came back to take the remaining chair, meaning we had to get up from our meals, dump our coats onto the end of the table in amongst the plates of food and make way for the chair to be moved. obviously this completely ruined the ambience of the meal, which was a shame because it was a special occasion. You might expect that kind of service in a pub, but not in a nice restaurant where you are paying a premium and are there for the experience as well as the food. Bit of a...

The food was of a good quality however the waiting staff's communication skills, etiquette and politeness was unfortunately questionable.

At the end of the meal, we were asked if we wanted dessert or the bill, with half a bottle of wine left. We decided not to have dessert, so the bill was left on the table for us, whilst we finished our wine. However another member of waiting staff then approached us, whilst we were drinking wine and talking, and asked if we were just loitering with the bill. We found this extremely rude. It was clear the two members of staff had not communicated with one another or picked up on normal customer social cues.

Furthermore at the start of the meal, there seemed to be difficulty with the same member of waiting staff who decided to suggest to my partner that they should put the olives in the middle to share. Despite ordering them as personal starter and a different starter sitting in front of me. It was a strange request and their apology for the miscommunication almost was blamed at us rather than their lack of understanding.

Overall we felt uncomfortable, however this was down to one member of staff in particular, and the food was lovely and the price reasonable.

We don't feel the behaviour was intentional, however some staff training may be needed to avoid these misunderstandings going forward.

Unfortunately we wouldn't visit again based off...