Peckham Bazaar — Restaurant in London

We booked a table for four at 6 pm. The restaurant was almost empty. We were given a table in the wooden decking area outside. I asked if we could be seated inside, but waitress 1 said no, we are fully booked. So we sat in the wooden decking area outside. There were some radiant lamp heaters, but on the table we were on, it didn't make much difference. The cold poured in from the wooden slats on the decking. My wife wore her thick coat throughout the meal. We both used the fleece rugs provided, although no one offered these to us.

Service was slow, despite there being few customers, no one offered even a drinks order until 6.15 pm. I had a negroni, which was OK. My wife is dairy free and they did have an allergens menu, although waitress 1 didn't know what the symbols on it meant.

The food is small sharing plates, and a lot of it was delicious. The best we had was the mackerel, which was sublime - served rare, with the perfect combination of smoke from the grill and salinity from the fish. The Ox cheek was falling apart tender served with a beautiful sauce. The Greek salad was super simple but utterly delicious. The prawns were also a big hit. Less impressive was the sirloin kebab - lovely accoutrements, but sirloin stands or falls with the quality of the meat, and this was unfortunately fairly bland. Another highlight was the artichoke puree served with the spinach and feta burek.

I had the orange wine, Kodra Recina, which was delicious. I also asked for a glass of the greek house red, which was fizzy and tasted like ribena. Maybe that's how it is supposed to taste, but I suspect it has just been poorly kept, whether at the restaurant or in transport, I don't know. I didn't like it, and after speaking with waitress 2, who seemed to know what she was doing much more, I sent it back with no questions asked, which I did appreciate.

I know I might sound picky, but at around £60 a head, I think pickiness is OK.

Conclusion: I think I will come back again, lots of the dishes were delicious. My toes are slowly coming back to life from the cold! Next time, I will visit in the summer or ensure...

Can't fault the food in terms of taste or execution, but the portion sizes were sometimes a bit laughable. There were 4 of us. We had not been before and had been really, really, really looking forward to it. It would have been helpful to have had some advice on being seated with menus by the waiting staff. "Have you been here before... we recommend this" etc. The menu does say that it is designed to be shared, but when a table of 4 is served 2 scallops (£10.50) that doesn't amount to more than a 'taster menu' portion. The bread, at £2 for 6 small slices (some particularly small) came across as mean.

The Octopus was actually surprisingly generous, in comparison to other restaurants. The Courgette fritter was certainly quite substantial in comparison to other dishes as well.

The Rabbit pastilla was sadly not so successful - it came across as more like a soggy spring roll than a crispy delicious pastilla!

The restaurant was very busy, which is always encouraging to see - but a side effect of this is sadly a very noisy environment acoustically. While we understood that this couldn't be helped exactly, it certainly did influence how long we stayed as we couldn't really have a free flowing conversation without ROARING.

Service was mixed. One member of staff was very friendly and polite, if a little shy, while another was rather cold. This certainly influenced us in terms of ordering more wine, and a dessert.

Again, I stress, the food was mostly incredibly delicious! It's just a shame that the other factors probably mean we would not go back, or recommend the place. Perhaps for 2 people it is a more successful venture, but for a group of 4 we felt rather let down sadly.

The wine was also rather overpriced. Retsina should never be £25 a bottle. Our wine at £36 a bottle, was a bit steep. Why not add a cheaper house wine...

Went here a few weeks ago. Wouldn’t go back. We had a reservation and were out enjoying the sun so phoned to ask could we push our reservation forward by an hour. We were told that was fine. When we arrived a young waiter who greeted us wasn’t friendly at all and put is on a tiny table directly in front of the open door. We then waited roughly half an hour to be served. A man who was polite and presumably the owner came and took our order eventually. We waited a long time and all that arrived was bread. We asked a waitress who was very rude and told us we just had to wait, despite us being nothing but polite. Finally after 1 hour and 10 minutes in the restaurant we were told our order had been forgotten (it didn’t print). The owner and chef were very polite (as opposed to the staff who were not at all). He let us have the bread for free and took my details and said he would email me and give us a meal on the house another night. I waited and the email never came.

In their defence the chef offered us a free drink and I suspect the owner would have given us a free meal that night, but at that point we had spent far too long there and had tickets to an event. No doubt if challenged about it now, he would claim he lost my details.

The food looked very good but the general attitude of this place seems to be that you are lucky to be there and you just need to take what you’re given. Fair to say the worst restaurant experience I’ve had in years. Partly due to what was clearly a mistake, but mainly just because we felt like we were treated like rubbish and then promised a meal another night which was...