The Hemingway — Restaurant in London

Update 13/12/23 - They have a local craft pale on draft which is nice and hoppy. The Beef Wellington was fantastic as it was last time and the service and staff was friendly and welcoming.

Original post (December 2021) - I'll get my one tiny negative out the way - please get better craft and cask beer on? You have some amazing breweries nearby (Old Street & Howling Hops to name 2) please please get some proper craft or cask ales - not just Doom Bar (owned by Molson Coors) and Beavertown (Owned by Heineken) these aren't craft.

Anyway, aside from that minor detail this place is fantastic!

Friendly staff, talkative and relaxed but very efficient and professional.

The Beef Wellington was absolutely amazing, me and my mate ordered one each - they are meant for 2 people however we both hadn't eaten all day in anticipation of this meal and we both cleared our plates.

The fillet of beef was tender and served medium-rare, it was seasoned very well and as Ramsay would say, it was 'beautiful'. The beef basically melted in your mouth. The duxelle was free of water and the deep earthy taste from the mushrooms was top notch. The puff party was cooked well being light and crispy.

This was served with a side of beans, stem brocoli and cabbage all again, well seasoned and cooked just right with only a slight crunch. Lovely. This came with a gravy boat.

A further side of triple cooked hand made chips was also served, these were also lovely and fluffy with a crunchy skin.

We shared a bottle of red with this and it paired with the meal perfectly

In Central London you'd pay over £70 just for the Wellington alone. This pub, being quiet and sofisticated yet laid back with some awesome music (most of which I noted featured in the The Inbetweeners as a coincidence, which was a fun twist) meant for me we had good value for money too, considering the rising costs of ingredients such as the fillet.

Would certainly return for another Beef Wellington and a bottle.

Hats off to the chef and the barman for a...

I could not have liked the dining experience less. The impressive physical facade of this beautiful Victorian pub betrays the cacophony, ineptitude, sloppy service and poor cuisine that awaits the hapless customer. Beyond the din of packed in diners struggling to be heard, you are greeted with a wall of overly loud Latin American music. I love a bit of Tito Puente as much as the next person, but I came away with a sore throat from having to shout to be heard. Don't expect great food. The vegetarian roast option was a disastrous bit of deep fried dough flecked with indiscriminate vegetables. In addition to this, the dish did not come with roast potatoes, which is strange as it was described as a roast with ALL the trimmings. It really was vile. The roast beef at £22 was tasty, but with its accompanying tasteless Yorkshire pud scarcity of gravy and disappointing roast potatoes, it made the price tag seem very inappropriate. Of the two roast chicken meals we ordered, only one arrived and that one was a spicy half chicken that you might expect from Nando's and not with a roast meal. The other chicken failed to materialise and the staff seemed to not care less. One of the servers even had the gall to state "Hey, we're busy" Having reminded them of our order, the server announced that they were now out of roast chicken, and the hastily ordered replacement of baked Brie appeared to confound the kitchen staff so much so that the reheating of this little bit of cheese took them a full twenty minutes and long after everyone else had finished. With no reduction for this error, it fell to one of our party to remind them that it would be customary to at least waive the cost of the replacement Brie. The Hemingway seems great for those who enjoy the buzz and the noise with their pan-Mediterranean cuisine and their craft beers, but it doesn't do the traditional roast at all well and needs to have a long hard look at itself as to whether it can justify those prices with such poor standards of food...

Make sure you get a paper reciept at The Hemingway, as they will happily imply you are not telling the truth, if you do not want to put your card behind the bar (as it is a security risk) even if their "system has lost your transaction". We booked a table in advance and visited The Hemingway for a sunday roast - but sadly I can't tell you what the food was like as we waited over 45 minutes, got two rounds of drinks and did not get served any food. The waiting staff took our order then when we asked where our order was, as other tables came in and ordered after us, and got served their food before us, tried to imply we had not paid in advance of being served. The waiting staff member, who took our order and payment, then presumably made a mistake giving our food to another table, acted as if we hadn't paid when the deputy manager was involved. In the end we asked for our money back as the attitude of saying we were basically pretending we had paid, when I had a paper receipt proving we had, was disgusting. They also tried to take away my paper reciept that was for over £50, then to add insult to injury, the deputy manger then took time showing my male partner the refund going onto my card - little side of chauvinism - as if only men pay for food in 2025! Banks do not advise putting your card behind the bar and these days venues can easily run a £0 charge, or offer a card safe system (this was not offered) to protect themselves and their customers. Sadly I do not think The Hemingway puts the customer experience first, or at least not in our case on Easter Bank Holiday Sunday. As we were starving after not being served food we had paid for - we went around to The Royal Inn on the Park, where we felt welcomed by the lovely staff, and were served a nice roast in a reasonable time frame. Thanks to Royal Inn on the Park for looking after...