The Campaner — Restaurant in London

One of the 2 or 3 most hilariously poor dining experiences of my life.

Scene 1: When prawns al ajillo are done well (£24.50 for a starter sets certain expectations), it's supposed to be garlicky, briny, rich, with a kick of fire and a hint of the sea.

Prawns al ajillo at The Campaner: four prawns wading in tepid olive oil arrive in the kind of dish that cats lunch from. Prawn flesh crumbles at the touch of a fork; mouth-feel is mealy. Seafood gone bad sometimes gives off the whiff of iodine, which was an old-time disinfectant. So the prawns al ajillo at The Campaner tasted like something between a playground wound and bad breath.

The final morsel of a good sharing dish should evoke shame of one’s desire for the last of a communal resource. When the last one and half prawns were taken away, no desire was felt, just shame. And also, hunger.

Scene 2: Sometimes, when a restaurant charges almost £6 for bread, you take it as a sign of confidence. You imagine chewy clouds of crumb disarming your own economic skepticism into pillowy submission. The almost £6 bread at The Campaner is not one of those times. Two slices of day-old sourdough were toasted so ardently that they snapped before giving any hint that they were once chewable. A mouth with any sense of self-preservation would immediately assign the almost £6 bread at The Campaner to the molars until threat of injury is neutralised.

The menu claims that the bread is from “Polaine,” which I assumed to be Poilâne, the Parisian bakery. I actually Googled “Polaine” to make sure that I wasn’t being uncharitable to some independent bakery down the street. The Google results page was like, “Did you mean Poilâne, you philistine?” Now, it could have been an honest spelling mistake that simply made it onto every paper copy of the menu as well as the website PDF. Or perhaps typesetting a circumflex would have eaten into the margins of the almost £6 bread. One shall never know.

But it did occur to me then that The Campaner’s target demographic might have not been me, a person wishing to exchange a reasonable amount of money for reasonable food, but a better-heeled, sans-souci set, who care less about price of things, or the edibility of food, or the correctness words.

Scene 3: I was at The Campaner for the birthday of my friend’s girlfriend. When the waiter asked for if we wanted dessert, my wife ordered a slice of cheesecake, and the birthday girl, a glass of port. When the birthday girl excused herself, the waiter came to my friend and affirmed, with a wink, some birthday instructions that had been given before. When the birthday girl returned, the waiter whisked around with a song and a candle… on top of my wife’s slice of cheesecake.

Now, never in my entire restaurant-dining life have I experienced such hilarious miserliness. For a birthday, the Campaner would have been in its right to do nothing. A decent establishment would have mustered up the four ounces of sugar and cream cheese to make sure that the birthday girl had her own slice of cake. Never would I have expected the requisition of another guest’s dessert. Prior to dining at the Campaner, I did not think it was possible for a birthday celebration to be an allegory of Bolshevik redistribution, but how naive I was.

On leaving the Campaner, I reflected on the why. Our booking was at 7:30 pm on a Thursday, and we left at around 11. We were one of maybe three or four tables of diners. The rent at Chelsea Barracks can’t be cheap. Perhaps the operating philosophy is that every diner must be optimised for the survival of the place - that’s the charitable explanation.

Less charitably, if the Campaner were a person, they would be a well-dressed confidence man pitching get-rich schemes to illiterate millionaires. Hopefully The Campaner will end up how these types mostly do - feet encased in cement, at the bottom of the river merely a hundred meters...

Update!!!!! Went back today 29/03 to see oif they had changed. Unfortunately not. Ordered three beers. Told they were unable to serve pints (which is on the menu) but can do half pints instead...We ordered: olives, Spanish meats, mushroom tortilla, peppers, 4 lots of croquettes and potato bravas. The peppers came out after 10 mins, followed by the meats and olives, 10 mins later the small tortilla came out. We then waited a bit longer, were offered another beer which we declined as we were ready to go by then. Forty five minutes after the mushroom tortilla, the potato braves turned up with the croquettes. We told them at the start we wanted nibbles WITH the drinks. We informed them that they came out far too late. 45 minutes after the other dishes. They responded it's tapas that's what happens. I know it comes out staggered, but not that much! We refused the food and informed them we thought they forgot and were ready to leave. They responded "well there's no room on the table" There was and also could have taken the empty plates?!

None of the servers seemed to even want to be there anyway, so why would we? We wished it had changed. Such a shame as we live so close.

Previous review: I really don't like writing reviews, but I have to on this occasion. The reason I gave this two stars and not one, is purely for the hostess who really tried to do everything last night. Here we go: We sit down and are given two specials menus and not the main menu, so we have to ask. They have to go and try and find one, which is fine, but we were confused why they were so hard to find. Our oysters turn up, and we notice im the only one with cutlery, but we didnt complain as we could hear the table next to us complaining about their lobster. Our second round of drinks were forgotten, and the hostess went up to the bar staff to ask where they were, and one of the gentlemen raised is hand to dismiss her which was incredibly rude, we finally got our drinks. The rice dish we had was basic, it had 5 prawns for two people, the rest was rice. Very salty and not worth the price unfortunately, also the fried potatoes were just chips and turned up cold. We asked for the dessert menu, 20 mins go by, no dessert menu. As compensation we were offered a free drink, which we accepted. I had been drinking white wine, the wine turns up a golden yellow, I take a sip and it tastes like vinegar, I smell it, smells like vinegar, my partner tries and has the same experience. The wine was clearly off. We complain. The hostess informs me the bar staff said it was the same wine. I'm sure it was the same type of wine, however mine was clearly off. They open a different bottle and pour a glass, the wine is the correct colour and no vinegar taste or smell. One of the waiters did try and tell me that when you drink wine with food it changes the taste. Unfortunately in this case the wine was off. They did remove two drinks from the bill for this. You do have to keep trying to get the waitors attention the whole evening or you can sit there for half an hour with no service, which is bad when only five tables were busy. The building is lovely, however you could hear a few tables complaining, and we really didn't want to add to that, but gone off wine is simply not okay. Also the music for the restaurant comes from a speaker behind a booth in the corner of the room, which doesn't work ambiently for a building this size. Overall, I feel it is overpriced, the staff need more training and perhaps a quality check for the food and drinks. Some of the staff are lovely, but you need more than that for...

Be careful; very careful…overpriced, variable food quality and service, and dubious ethics.

My wife is from Malaga and I’ve been fortunate enough to enjoy many fine Spanish meals in Andalusia and London over the 7 years we have been together. Sadly this was not one of them. To anyone considering this establishment, I would strongly urge that you go to Barrafina, Morito, Arroz QD, Escocesa, or Llerena nstead.

The start off with I have major reservations regarding their ethics and transparency. As we sat down; we were immediately given the hard sell by the male waiter (dark hair, thin moustache) as to whether we wished to kickstart with a plate of cheeses, cold meats and jamon before we were given the menu (in the same way you may be offered olives or some other pre-meal nibbles).

Not wishing to appear dismissive, one of the party agreed and we were served the plates pictured. The cold meats looked and tasted like a Tescos selection pack. The cheese plate was the size of a desert plate for 2. What we weren’t prepared for was the price they charged (£29 for the cold meat plate, £24 for the cheese). I took this up with the manageress, as I was sceptical about the ethics of what was a clear oversell before we had barely sat down and also the quality/portion size of what had been provided. The only defence offered was that the products were from Spain including a ‘Spanish blue cheese she referred to as a Stilton??’. Quite frankly I couldn’t care less if they were from Pluto - if you are going to take advantage of your guests and charge c. £55 for some pre-dinner nibbles for 4 diners as they are taking their seats, at least have the courtesy to point this out to them.

Later in the meal, I asked the same male waiter for some aioli. Thirty minutes later and having finished all of the tapas dishes bar one, it still hadn’t arrived. I politely asked him again to which he nonchalantly brushed my request off with ‘yeah it’s coming’. Lesson 2 - what you ought to have said was ‘oh so sorry, I forgot, let me get it straight away’.

In fairness, some of the dishes did hit the mark, notably the lamb leg and pork cheek rice , hence an extra star. However many of the dishes were lacking in execution, flavour or flair. In particular the £21 prawn al ajillo was a really down - limp tasteless prawns swimming in a bland reddish ‘broth’ with 2 small slithers of garlic. If a fine dining authentic Spanish restaurant can’t get this staple right, then something is clearly going wrong.

The largely mediocre food was complimented by distinctly inattentive and invisible service. Despite being a quiet Sunday night at 20% capacity, our male waiter was rarely to be seen and although the manageress did show some initiative to attend to us, we often found ourselves scanning the room and waiting for minutes to get someone’s attention.

The final bill came to £125 per head and was extortionate for what was sadly a forgettable...