Salt Yard Borough — Restaurant in London

Really gutted to be leaving this review, as I was excited about dining here, and it started pretty well! Service was great as we arrived, and our cocktails and first few dishes were fab. Unfortunately from then, our evening took a real turn for the worst. The Wagyu sliders in particular were tough and dry, lacking seasoning; and the patatas bravas not only turned up 12 or 13 minutes after we had finished everything else, but were really poor, and again lacked seasoning or much flavour at all. At 10pm the waitress let us know we needed to order dessert as the kitchen was going to close - (understandable, I work in hospitality). So we told her what we wanted, and carried on eating. Next thing we knew, dessert was dropped at our table whilst our plates were still full of savoury food - no smile, no explanation as to what she was putting down, no cutlery. We were pretty shocked, and hoped to ask her to at least put it under the heatlamp...however this was without luck, as seemingly so our minutes being served were over. This is where my complaint really starts, as the chefs had produced staff food under the lights, and in dribs and drabs front of house staff walked past and picked food up with their hands and ate it, whilst we tried to get their attention. This happened for 4 or 5 minutes until the whole FOH team except one sat at the bar and ate food with their backs to the restaurant, or went off to presumably a staff room or back room. Eventually we had to get up ourselves, apologise for interrupting their dinner and ask for a spoon to eat the dessert, which we ate surrounded by our plates and savoury dishes.

Really disappointing - and for a meal with a bill of over £70 a head, left a really bad taste in our mouths. I work in restaurants, I know the hours are tough and we get hungry, but dinner time and breaks need to be managed more effectively. I did want to feedback on the night, but unfortunately the manager on shift had gone home. I had been so excited to try Salt Yard, but when there is so many insanely good tapas places around London Bridge, I unfortunately...

In London for the day, went to Borough Market and had a coffee and some appetizers here.

The decor is very nice, loved the layout. Windows on the main floor that can open up when the weather is good, and a downstairs bar dining area that we were told can be booked for events. One big downside however was the conversation noise level. As there is nothing “soft” in the decor or furnishings, the sound from conversation and the open kitchen echoes loudly throughout the main dining room…it was deafening! As the restaurant was less than 1/4 full, had it been packed we might have had to leave. Very unfortunate as we really liked the atmosphere. Who knows…maybe if it was packed with people, all the bodies might have muffled the sound!

The service was also lacking, we were seated very quickly, and pretty much ignored after that. Had to flag down someone to take our order, get something else, and to get our check. This was not because they were busy,which they weren’t, it was just because all the staff was busy conversing and did not bother to focus on the customers, well at least not for us.

Sampled a couple of the bar snacks, the Patatas bravas, and Croqueta Jamon. Very pretty presentation, when the food came out. The Patatas were basically fried potato chunks with a little sauce. The sauce was good, but the overall dish was nothing special. The Croqueta were small deep fried balls filled with a whipped manchego cheese. Supposedly there was ham in them, but could not taste any if there was.

With coffee, a bottle of still water, and our small snacks, an included 12.5% service fee, the total bill came to £29.81. A bit on the high side for the amount and quality of the food.

Would I go there again…probably not Would I recommend…probably not. Plenty of other places in London to choose from with less noise, better service, and higher quality food for a...

Avoid. Living in London, I am quite accustomed to being tripped off. However, my lunchtime experience at Salt Yard Borough left me absolutely reeling.

I attended with family members for a quiet reunion, and after extensive research of website and reviews, deduced this would be the best choice in terms of food on offer and value for money. How wrong I was.

Typically, when you think of ‘Tapas’, you understand there is a sharing arrangement of some kind. True, we were met with the menu of multiple dishes varying from meat to vegetables all of which had fancy descriptions all of which omitted to say how many items per portion there were. The staff were kind - especially after we asked to move table - but failed to explain how many dishes per dish were available per dish. We ordered a scallop dish, and when I say you get one scallop, I mean ONE (!) scallop arrived, costing a whole £9.50 for the pleasure. To add insult to injury, the scallop was totally inedible and uncooked. It was removed from the bill, but there was zero discussion whilst I was paying of how they could better rectify our clearly bad experience. No one asked how the food was, (perhaps out of fear?!) but it made the whole lunch rather fraught and rather stressful. I will not be returning to the Salt yard, unless I fancy being robbed in broad daylight for completely below average food- in which case, I’ll grab one of those TikTok chocolate strawberries...