Thai Elephant Richmond — Restaurant in London

Usually I try to avoid leaving negative reviews, but I and my wife were very disappointed with the service received. This was the second time we visited this restaurant. On the first occasion the service was not great but we decided to come here again hoping that things improved. We arrived mid week in the evening to have a dinner with my wife. The restaurant was almost empty. Up on arrival I ordered two drinks we waited half an hour for them to arrive, while we waited for our drinks waiter came over and asked if we were ready to order our meals on which I replied that we are still waiting for our drinks and she without a word run off and disappeared for further 10 minutes.

Finally our drinks arrived and we ordered out starters and mains. We ordered Tom Yum soup with prawns. Both soups had very roughly chopped mushrooms (in half) and 1 or maximum 2 prawns for the price of £6.95 each. Prawn dumplings were nice but again you get only 4 small ones for the price of £6.25 and they had very small amount of prawns. The taste of pork was overpowering.

Lets move on to the mains average price is £13 per dish. For this price you get very little seafood or meat. We ordered some coconut rice to accompany our mains the price of small rice ball is £3.20 first portion of coconut rice tasted like they added just a little bit of coconut butter/oil. It came without peanuts like it supposed to. Then second portion of rice tasted better and had peanuts sprinkled on top.

At the end they refused to accept taste card despite the restaurant being part of it.

There are many other good and modern restaurants around with much better service. You can dine in central London in Thai restaurant Patara for the similar money and get much...

The food was quite nice last night even if the Dim Sum tasted a bit processed and the sauce was not as authentic as other versions I've eaten in other local Thai restaurants.

However, it all turned wrong when the service failed to clear our plates for 10 mins after finishing our meal. Then after another 20 mins, we got the dessert menu having craned my neck to get attention. They ran out of 2 dessert choices which I thought was quite strange given the restaurant was not busy and we we're not dining particularly late in the day. To compound matters, 30 minutes have passed by and we still didn't have dessert on our table. We looked up and the lady saw us waiting and shouted across the middle of the restaurant to our table saying: "it's coming". By this point my wife had enough and I decided to ask for the bill.

They had the cheek to refuse the bill saying dessert had not yet been added on. I explained that we were paying for dessert to which he the head waiter (HW) explained that the desserts are cooked from scratch. I said 'fair enough' but then how could he explain the poor service and why didn't anyone explain to us that dessert would take 30 mins? He said he didn't know, he still charged the 10% service and didn't even apologise or empathise.

The above is fact and is what happened. As to my thoughts on the subject I thought the grey haired ex civil engineer now pretending to be a Head Waiter was very rude. The staff are very slow and lazy and know nothing about good restaurant service. The food itself is second rate compare to the local competition and we won't be going...

I have been remiss publishing this review, but the Blue Elephant was a great find off the beaten tracks of Richmond. Very good for bus links (the station is outside) and a short walk to the train. From the street it looks very pretty, with a flower garden and a conservatory. It was late on Friday and the venue was half empty. The patron explained that Covid had hit business hard, but she was determined to continue, so I hope this establishment does continue. I hope to be back. There were four of us, all made to feel more than welcome. Back to the food: we chose a set menu because it was easier than matching tastebuds and it did not disappoint. A great collection of starters including - unusually we thought - crispy duck. For the mains a green Thai chicken, another duck dish, a spicy beef noodles and a concoction of crisp fried vegetables. All we're fragrant and flavourful, the garlic and the spring onions particularly pungent. We left very happy and satisfied. Thank-you and congratulations to all at the...