Oysteria — Restaurant in London

Our visit to Oysteria was deeply disappointing. We had made a reservation and informed them in advance that we were coming in for drinks and light food. However, when the older gentleman came to take our order, he seemed visibly annoyed that we were only ordering small plates and not main courses. His demeanor came across as judgmental and irritated, which set an uncomfortable tone for the evening. It felt as though, because we weren’t ordering mains, the staff decided we weren’t worth their attention or care.

While the oysters arrived promptly, the rest of our food was significantly delayed, leaving half our party eating while the others waited. Given that we only ordered starters and a sharing board, it was reasonable to expect everything to come out together. The restaurant wasn’t busy—there appeared to be more staff than customers—so the mediocre service was especially frustrating, particularly given the three-figure price tag. The only redeeming aspects of the visit were the cocktails, which were excellent thanks to the bartender, and the manager, who managed to expedite our food after we raised concerns. (Upon reaching home we also realised that our sharing board was missing the olives and arancini, however at the time did not realise as we were so hungry.)

When the bill arrived, we opted out of the service charge and explained to the staff member that we didn’t feel cared for during our meal. He appeared annoyed, adjusted the bill without a word of acknowledgment, and walked away. This lack of care was evident throughout the experience—from start to finish—and left us feeling completely disregarded.

For an expensive restaurant in Canary Wharf, this visit was truly disappointing. Unfortunately, the food did not compensate for the poor service.

UPDATE: the day after I posted this, there has been a surge of positive service reviews. Can only suspect management have been pushing these misleading reviews to get their...

Terrible Experience at Oysteria in Canary Wharf

I recently had the misfortune of dining at Oysteria in Canary Wharf, and it was an absolute disaster from start to finish. After being served my starter, I waited over 45 minutes for my mains to arrive. This was only after I flagged down the manager to ask if we were ever going to get our food! Shockingly, no staff member approached us during this ridiculous wait to offer any explanation or apology.

When the food finally arrived and I confronted the manager about the delay, he responded in the most unprofessional manner imaginable. He got extremely personal and said, "it would not look good to the staff if a customer walked off while the manager was trying to sort the issue." This left me utterly baffled—how does that even address the problem?

As for the food, it was absolutely mediocre, to say the least. I ordered the very basic "Fish and Chips," and even this simple dish was a complete disaster. The fish was leaking oil worse than a car in a garage—I'm almost certain it was just a frozen item from a local supermarket. How can anyone mess up fish and chips this badly?

To add insult to injury, the manager tried to smooth things over by offering us a dessert on the house after we refused any further drinks. Unfortunately, the dessert was just as dreadful as the main course. The brownie with ice cream was absolutely disgusting—like an over-microwaved chocolate cake that was so hot it was still bubbling. The ice cream, if you could even call it that, had turned to cream due to the excessive heat.

I honestly don't understand how people can claim the food here is amazing. And to top it all off, they still had the audacity to try to charge us a service charge.

Avoid this place at all costs. It's not worth your...

Service is exceptionally poor and disorganised - the worst I've experienced in Canary Wharf and is a disservice to the quality of the food. We asked for water when our order was taken and it never arrived. We waited around 45 minutes for our starter (just oysters - uncooked) and another 1 hour for our mains. Given how long it took for the starter and mains to arrive, we decided to order our dessert when the mains arrived to avoid another lengthy delay.

Our dessert was then served while we were eating our mains (including one dessert with ice cream...) (!) - we expressed our confusion and told the waiter we were still eating our mains (as he could see) - rather than offer to take the desserts back to the kitchen and wait for us to finish eating (clearly this would have been a good idea given the ice cream), to our utter confusion, the waiter left the food on our table. When we had finished our mains and for the entire time we were eating dessert, no one came to pick up the plates and we were left to awkwardly shuffle dishes around to eat our desserts as there was no space on the table. When our dessert was served, we were one of only two sets of customers left in the restaurant - instead of attending to us with care and diligence, the staff were chatting with one another and having a drink at the bar (before closing time).

Clearly, the restaurant needs to rethink its training and staffing model and/or hire more chefs to cater for the number of customers.

The food is actually not bad, but we've firmly struck this restaurant from our list given the poor service and lengthy service time. There are a lot of better restaurants in Canary Wharf, so don't waste your time here...