Patron French Firehouse — Restaurant in London

Good but not great. Lots of potential.

We went as a table of 4 on a Tuesday seating 6:45ish. Easy to get a weekday booking but advise against walk ins as it’s only 26 covers so a small place. Given the number of covers there were only two front of house staff but they managed without issue. The kitchen seemed to struggle though even with a 2/3s full restaurant. The atmosphere was relaxed with low volume music (probably not needed) and nice lighting, adequate spacing between tables, sticking to the French theme.

To drink we had a carafe of red and a carafe of white, modestly priced for good quality wine. We had one starter (mushroom ragu) and shared some bread. Nothing bad about this although not great, could have had a stronger mushroom taste.

Unfortunately the food leaving the kitchen went downhill from here. Two steaks with bone marrow butter and two duck legs with red wine reduction ordered alongside some green beans, broccoli and gratin dauphinoise. The mains have no other item in the dish, steak is a steak, you have to order sides as well. This means a steak with frites will run you to £40. The steaks were recommended medium rare which is what we requested. They came out well past well done, charred and dry. We sent both back whilst the other party members ate their duck. No red wine reduction so the duck was very dry.

By the time the fresh steaks emerged the other two had finished and the sides were cold. The new steaks were perfectly cooked and very tasty although I’ve certainly had better quality for £34.

Onto desert, three crème brûlées and one chocolate mousse. The mousse was one of the trendy ones that gets served out of a cauldron and was nice enough, very rich. Of the three crème brûlées, two were very grainy almost like the egg had scrambled. The other was very nice.

They kindly discounted the steak by 25% but I don’t feel this made up for effectively having dinner at a different time to our other diners or missing out on any of the sides being fresh.

£219 plus a £30 service charge which we removed and left a £20 tip in cash for the two FOH staff, asking for it not to be split with the kitchen staff.

It didn’t feel like good value at all considering other establishments can deliver a significantly improved product for the same price and closer into town. An example being a recent dinner at Libertine (corn exchange) for four people which was a similar price but for x4 starters, mains and deserts plus wine including the service.

Overall disappointing, won’t...

TLDR: Hard pass, go a few stops further on the tube and pay Brasserie Zedel a visit - you might even save money doing so and won’t leave hungry.

Buyer’s remorse is a terrible feeling, and I’ve come down with a serious case of it, having just made it home from this place, £120 now irrevocably subtracted from my already sub-par net worth. The worst of it is that, if you’ve had three courses at a proper French bistro, you should definitely have to loosen your belt by a notch or two as you vacate your table. Sadly, in this case, I left still feeling peckish - a bit of an indictment in itself. Patron is not without potential; there’s someone in the back who knows what they’re doing. The trouble is that you are served so little food here (four asparagus spears for £12?!) that you can’t help resenting the eye-watering prices in exchange for mostly-empty plates. Then there’s the fact that this primarily feels like a bar that caters for peckish drinkers, not a restaurant that happens to also work for ‘just drinks’ scenarios. So if you come for dinner, be prepared for incongruously loud and lively music and to feel like you’re out of place. The service is prompt enough but one waitress in particular exemplified the kind of surliness you don’t really expect in an establishment so keen to lighten your wallet. And just as a final morsel of feedback (I’m more generous with my morsels than this restaurant), any bread that accompanies a dish here is mysteriously toasted to teeth-breaking levels of brittleness. Is this a way to disguise stale loaves and make those margins even fatter? You’d hope not, but there’s enough smoke here to warrant...

Went here on Saturday 11th Jan.

First of all the food was outstanding and full of flavour, steak cooked to perfection. The first batch of fries that I received were soggy but after sending them back they came back very quickly and perfect. I have dined here before and always had a great experience.

However, this time we found that service was lacking towards the end of the meal. The music stopped and the staff were nowhere to be seen. We waited 15 minutes for a pudding menu, after another 15 minutes we felt like we wanted to just leave so when we were finally offered a dessert we actually wanted to leave and I asked for the bill. An optional service charge was listed on the bill.

I didn't feel like the experience was worth the entire service charge, so I paid in cash and expected my change so I could leave what I felt was warranted. A young gentleman waiter brought back my change and I could see that he had taken the WHOLE service charge and just left me my change. When I asked him to bring me back my change in full I felt that he changed his mood and he became, I felt, quite rude.

If the service charge is listed as optional then it should be.

It really spoiled our experience of a night we had really looked forward to. I live locally and always like to patron local restaurants. This experience has put me off from going back. I was also really hoping to try their new premises in Highbury, that won't be happening now.

We wanted to spend money on a real treat and if things had been different we would have had a pudding and even...