Mildreds Dalston — Restaurant in London

A confusing experience, unfortunately won't be back again.

Having been to Mildred's Soho before, I was super excited to try out the Supper club.

Price: £35 Food: 7-course tasting menu

The Off the book Vegan Supper Club is described as an experimental club, I couldn't find more information about it, but it definitely wasn't what I expected. At £35, it is a steal, but a few things meant I won't be back again.

We were never once asked how our food was, so here is the feedback I wanted to give but didn't have a chance to. Not a complaint, just feedback (at least at the time). Even when paying, the only question we were asked was to check the bill is correct. A very strange question to ask, not did you enjoy the food?

kitchen: the main dish courgette lasagne was cold in the middle, both me and my partner's. Not a huge deal in itself, didn't complain about it, ate it, enjoyed it. However, felt betrayed when we went home, saw the behind the scenes on Mildred's Instagram, that the lasagne was meant to be pan fried on its side. Assuming to heat them up. Looks amazing, not ours though. Ours had no sign of coming near a pan (see photo). We were the last long table they served, guess the kitchen fed up on heating them up. The couple next to us had the same non-fried lasagne. One guy actually sent his back, his new one was pan-fried.

Here on out is my review:

meal time: took 3 hours! Booked 2 months in advance (it was booked out that early), in every reminder I received, it says that if you're a table of 1-4 people, you can only stay for 1.5 hours. Not a problem! But the meal took 3 hours. A few tables left when there were still 2-3 courses left.

service: everyone seemed very rushed, guessing to try and shorten the already prolonged meal. But cutleries were being dropped frequently, once even dropped into a guy's lap next to us. Probably didn't help that the plates are pretty hefty, whilst nice, are too heavy for the waitresses to be stacking and carrying so many covers' worth.

food: out of the 7 courses, the carpacio dish was a weird concoction. The lasagne was saved by the truffle oil, even if it wasn't cold, it wasn't the most exciting dish flavour-wise. If this was a main dish on the a la carte menu, I would be extremely disappointed. The rest were really good! Loved the arancina. The raspberry tart with pistachio base was divine.

Overall not a great experience. I would rather they charge more and have a nicer time. I do want to know the goal of the Supper club. I maybe mistakenly thought it was to test out new dishes for the main restaurants, but we were never asked about food, so I guess not? At £35, it is really good value for the food, but unfortunately not an amazing...

My friend and I arrived with my sleeping toddler, in the afternoon. Only a few tables were taken when we were greeted by a lady who could practise smiling a little more often. We asked her if it were possible to turn the music down just a notch as it was quite overpowering and we wanted to chat and eat in peace. She said she'd ask the manager. A lady with a bob, who seemed to be the manager, approached us next and very rudely said: 'well, maybe a little bit, it's on for all the guests!' That set the tone and had I had the time, I would have left at that point and looked for somewhere else to eat. When she came to take our order (after the first lady had taken our drinks order), my friend had trouble understanding her (because the music was loud) and had to ask her to repeat several times. Her attitude was really off with us. When I told her we'd already ordered drinks, her reply was: 'well, I haven't communicated with her, so tell me again.' We told her again and while my friend's order arrived, mine was nowhere to be seen. The absolute saviour came with a set of bright pink eyebrows. If it hadn't been for her, I'd give the place the lowest rating. She was friendly, kind and up-beat and should be the manager. She clearly understood a thing or two about customer service and even offered to swap out my main dish and recommended something else. The food was tasty. I wasn't a fan of the noodle dish, so I swapped it for the aubergine dip and the lovely sweet potato, which was a good choice. The paratha was also very nice and I really liked the white chocolate tiramisu. When the bill came, the first lady returned and was in a rush to get me to tap the card reader and vanish. I only realised after that they'd automatically added a juicy 'voluntary' tip of 12.5% that I would happily have taken off and given to the one capable person at...

The decor of the place was promising. But I'm afraid everything else was a disappointment. First, the spinach was "crunchy" with sand... When we reported that it seemed unwashed, the waiter came back relaying the chef's answer: "we get all our vegetables pre washed from our supplier"... (?!?) It was just unwashed... But we didn't want to make a fuss, they accepted to bring us another portion "re-washed". Guess what, no more sand... then after we ate most of our meal, we found a piece of plastic in the beans. We got an apology for that, but it felt like the waiter was going through the motions rather than being truly sorry that something like that could have happened (I don't even know how plastic ends up in canned beans... It makes me wonder about the general messiness that can lead to that. Interestingly the waiter proactively offered to open an investigation. I was curious about what that might look like but didn't wanna dwell so I didn't engage). It seemed promising when she came back to say she was sorry overall and "sorted our bill" based on what happened. But then she came back asking for a 50% payment despite the fact that both of our meals had issues. We pushed back (I'll spare you the details) and they accepted to "only" charge us for our drink (6 pounds). But you get the gist: lukewarm apologies and then trying to do the least possible to make it up to you. It didn't feel like a place where anyone massively cares about food quality or customer experience. Frankly I can't give you any reason why you should go there. If you have other options, I'd recommend you go for...