San Carlo - London — Restaurant in London

Went to San Carlo for the first time for a friends birthday celebration where she had booked the private dining room and we all paid for a set menu for the occasion.

The interior was really beautiful, lovely atmosphere and the food was nice for a set menu. Was a big fan of the panna cotta. The guy in the screenshot wearing the white chef jacket and apron deserves a mention as he gave really good service and was incredibly professional.

The experience at the restaurant and dinner service that evening was 4/5 star worthy until the end of the evening where we encountered a gentleman in a black suite (who I can only assume to be the manager) and was not there earlier in the night who’s tone was quite rude to us when it came to paying the bill. To give context we were fully aware that it was closing time for them and they were trying to get us out so I went up to the till to get the bill for everyone. At this point some people had already left as they were catching trains and they paid for their remaining amount (set menu was £55, we each paid a deposit of £25, so that evening the remaining to pay was £30 + any drinks we ordered + service charge). As I had calculated my remaining to pay, the younger lady who had the card machine was putting the amount in and it was at this point that the gentleman said no we can’t do that, we’ve never done that (even though they had literally done that for the others that left 30 minutes ago), and the bill had to be split equally between everyone that was left in the room.

I understand why this is easier for them to do, but this was concerning for me as I knew there were some people in the group that did not order any alcoholic drinks so it would not have been fair on them to pay so much (each person would have to pay £68 to split the bill equally - not including the £25 we already paid as deposit) so in total £93 per person for the evening. Though not an issue for some, the actual principle of not giving us a choice but to just tap our cards and leave and being spoken to in such a rude manner did really ruin the end of the night.

They had ample opportunity to give us the bill earlier in the night and even after they had given us dessert and this would have allowed us time to either calculate the split amongst ourselves and them enough time to make sure it matched the bill or simply just taken payments for each drink as they were ordered by the individuals. So then the split at the end done equally would have made sense.

I’ve worked in hospitality for both fine dining establishments and casual dining so I’m aware of what other solutions could have been presented with regards to the bill, but the attitude of that gentleman truly was shocking and outright lazy for not wanting to add up receipts. It is because of him that any interest I had in coming back to dine upstairs and try the a la carte menu is gone, and I will not be recommending San Carlo. I don’t want to make any assumptions based on my limited encounter with him, but even the way he spoke to the female waitress was very rude. We were a room full of women of colour so I hope that there was no discrimination at play on his part as to why his behaviour was like...

"Best Italian in London"? more like "Most incompetent restaurant in the UK"

I have never been to a worse restaurant. My family came here for my 21st birthday only to leave without having eaten, after waiting almost 2 hours for a main course which came out cold and incorrect.

This isn't even the only problems we had that night.

After finishing starters and having to order drinks multiple times due to waitors forgetting our orders, two waitors behind our table collided. They spilled what we thought to be a red wine sauce all over the unoccupied chair at our table. Unfortunately, this was the chair my very WHITE blazer hung over which stained from the sauce. I immediately tried to wash it out in the bathrooms, but without a hand drier it was left soaking wet and still stained.

There was one waitor who was incredibly helpful and polite and tried to used their steam cleaner to dry the jacket, however although it wasn't much used, the gesture was appreciated.

We then spent an hour waiting for our main course, watching tables who came in 20 minutes after us receive both starters, mains and desserts. We had a show to attend so we couldn't exactly wait much longer and spoke again to a waitor to check the order was with the kitchen. And after 1 hour and 40 minutes our mains finally arrived...

...except the food was stone cold and we had an extra lobster instead of my mum's sea bass. We were incredibly hunger and we could no longer wait for the order to be replaced.

While some members of staff were quick to apologise and took the food order off our bill, another waitor was only focused on making sure we paid for drinks after my father stormed out. We were all pretty much holding back tears after we left and incredibly hungry.

I work at a high end restaurant myself at front of house and we would NEVER have a situation like this, much less MULTIPLE INSTANCES of a problem to this extent happening.

The management is non existent and the waitors have no clue on which tables are which, and for a place of such expense, are incredibly clumsy. This place needs to either train their staff and not be so incompetent as to send out cold food. These problems with orders can easily be avoided by segmenting up the restaurant and have staff in charge of certain areas. It's practically common sense of a restaurant of this size to have practices like this in place.

Nevertheless to say we will never be coming back and have greatly discouraged our acquaintances from doing so. There are so many other restaurants which will give you a better experience at a better price. Don't come here, it's...

We raised a complaint with San Carlo via email and received nothing back. We were welcomed very nicely and had our coats taken, but unfortunately it feels like after we ordered we were sidelined somewhat and barely acknowledged. The food we ordered was all far below the quality we would expect from San Carlo, but in all honesty I wouldn't have been impressed if I'd received it in a budget restaurant. The zucchini fritte was cold and the truffle parmesan fries were lukewarm at best with no taste of truffle and no seasoning. We sent back the zucchini fries because they were too cold to enjoy, but didn't send back the fries as we didn't want to make things difficult. The bruschetta was very good however. We also had the caviar and Scallop linguine which we were very disappointed to find was again drastically under seasoned. The sauce was too thick (like the dish had been sat for too long) and needed loosening, and the taste of saffron was barely present. We also noticed the presentation of ours was lacking and we had an extremely small blob of caviar put on the side of the plate. We noticed a table across from us ordered the same dish and received a beautifully presented meal with two large blobs of caviar on each Scallop. None of the food was inedible (except the cold zucchini), but it was far below the standard of what we have received in the past and wouldn't have felt out of place in a Pizza Express. Our salt grinder also didn't work, so we had to use another table's to try to get some level of seasoning into the food.

Finally when we asked for the bill, we were charged for bottled water that we didn't consume. We had tap water which was present on the table at this time. When we queried this, the serve looked at us quizzically and asked us again whether we had bottled water. Given that he had been our server throughout (amongst others), it was disappointing that he had to ask.

We stayed a total of around 40 minutes and left hungry and unimpressed. I don't know if the service we received was due to us ordering a reasonably small amount of food compared to our usual fare, or whether it's because we mentioned that we were seeing a show, but it put a dampener on our evening...