The Ivy Asia Chelsea — Restaurant in London

Ivy Asia is a feast for the eyes, which was lovely but didn't help our stomachs one bit. It's king of a celebration of pan-Asian design, but created in such an over-the-top way that it's almost insultingly ironic. The uniforms are tailored and jaw-dropping, and the floor, designed to look like jade, glows a lurid fluorescent green. Napkins are rolled and fastened with a dragon-shaped ring. The bar is bedecked in gold, the glassware is beautiful, and depending on where you're sitting, the ceiling is covered with either cherry blossoms or Chinese lanterns. I needed the loo. It’s a small restroom for a large restaurant, and there was a queue for the two urinals. There's a third, but they've stood a statue of a smirking samurai at it.

Back in reality, we perused the menu. "It's a sharing concept", the host said. Ugh, I hate this service style now. It's been done to death. The prices are high, but not awful. There's a lot of choice, such as sushi, sashimi, small plates like gyoza and salads, larger plates like a duck and lobster fried rice, a robata beef section, and plates to share between two, like aromatic half-duck. There are tasting menus that give you the full experience, so the three of us took the ‘premium’ menu at £sixty-five per person.

I'm delighted and, to be honest, surprised to say that Ivy Asia isn't a polished turd. The food was amazing, but as I said, were we in the right frame of mind since we were ravenous? I don’t know, but we enjoyed most of what was served. Wontons with yoghurt and Szechuan dips were gone in sixty seconds as the three of us hoovered them up. For me though, the seared beef tataki with ponzu dressing was the star of the meal, the soft slithers of beef melting in the mouth against the treacle umami dressing.

My word, they can nail sushi too! Yellowtail rolls with asparagus were clean, refreshing and well-made. Fresh salmon sashimi was given the Ivy touch with a hint of truffle miso. The quality of the fish was such that the marinade was as needless as the bowl of smoking dry ice, on which they were served.

Nevertheless, by the time the sushi and sashimi were finished, we were getting worried there wouldn't be enough food. I'm not even exaggerating. For three people, let alone three hungry people, the portions were lean. We asked the waiter for a plate of that amazing-sounding fried rice to share. "Uh-uh, you'll definitely not need that". Taking his word for it, we soldiered on to the hot starters of pork and chicken gyoza and Ebi prawn tempura. The tempura was lovely enough but lacked the showiness of the previous courses, which I was unashamedly buying into by now. To an extent, the gyoza also appeared in front of us a little on the beige side, but they were redeemed by virtue of being the best gyoza I've ever tried. With the dumpling having a decent integrity and a plump, spicy filling that didn’t explode into watery misery, I was in heaven. And to our relief, by now, we were filling up, just in time for the mains.

Cod, slow roasted with a 48-hour miso was lovely but felt a little derivative, given that Nobu offers something almost exactly the same, but frankly better. I really enjoyed the salt and pepper beef fillet. It was succulent to me and paired well with a lime and pink pepper dressing. The mains were served with – I counted them – three pieces of bok choy and an laughably small pot of rice. Did we need the fried rice, I asked my other half?

"We didn’t need it, but I would have eaten it".

Another plume of dry ice heralded the arrival of the dessert plate, called 'Moon Dragon'. Choux buns were filled with chocolate cream. ‘Filled’ is a little generous of me, as some of them were, some of them weren't. The promised honeycomb cheesecake with yuzu caramel was three petits fours. There was a twist of vanilla ice cream and a miniscule pot of chocolate sauce that we had no idea what to do with.

OK, so desserts aren’t Ivy Asia's thing, and that's fine. We opted for a second round of cocktails, which were wonderful. My Mango Sling was a...

I am writing to tell you about the terrible experience I had with the service last night at The ivy Asia restaurant in King's Road. We had a reservation for 22:30, I would like to point out that the time was not agreed by phone, but is one of the slots available on the website. The fact is that we arrived on time and waited at least a quarter of an hour for a table, which would not be a big problem, if only after a minute that we had the menu, the waiter rushed us, telling us that we should have ordered immediately because the kitchen was closing. What's more, the same waiter when he gave us the menu kept explaining and repeating his idea of ordering a small dish and a medium one, in a nagging manner. The fact is that from the moment we ordered, the tragedies began. They took the wrong order and we ended up with half the food. When we pointed this out, they told us that nothing could be done now because the kitchen was closed and they had already cleaned everything (I want to point out that they give reservations at this time and they gave us the table late). They put the wine in a glacette, far from the table, which therefore requires staff to check and note when it is time to pour the wine, obviously no one considered this. When you were looking for a waiter (not just for this but for asking for anything) you had to spend an infinite amount of time trying to get someone to take you into consideration, so several times we had to get up (the glacette was a long way from the table) to get the wine, only once did a waiter, who was clearly not following our table, seeing me standing up take the bottle from my hands and apologise. We didn’t eat half the things we had ordered, so we got another bottle of wine and some desserts. They had not yet arrived and immediately a waiter brought us the bill, insisting that we should have paid immediately, how rude. The desserts and wine arrived after a good 20 minutes, but then, with the bottle of wine full and the desserts having just arrived, I want to point out again that we had already paid, they came and repeatedly told us we had to leave because the kitchen was closed. I would like to stress that despite all these obvious problems that were all kindly pointed out, no reduction in the service charge was applied, nor was a dessert or wine offered, nor anything. The only person who was nice to us when we were thrown out was Shayan the bodyguard. It is a shame that the service was so poor, and above all that no one apologised, because I respect people's work and these things can happen, because the food is good and the location is beautiful. I hope that with this message you will be able to improve so that no one has a terrible experience like mine. (The food was good, I gave 1 star because basically...

I went there with my best friend, to celebrate my birthday and her engagement. We were extremely disappointed with a very poor service. In fact me and my friend were so unhappy, that we have refused to pay the service charge for the first time ever. And we dine often in different restaurants in London and also in different countries. The service was so bad , that I think I could get a better one in literally everywhere else. Probably even in McDonald’s or a kebab place. What is the point of asking people if they are coming to celebrate a special occasion, if you don’t plan to do anything to make them feel special in any way. Some customers were treated better, some worse. We have ordered many things, one of them was the wagyu beef steak, which is quite pricey, we have also ordered drinks and the desserts later. It was chaos. They were making mess on the table , not asking any questions and putting everything on the table wherever they wanted, which made me and my friend have to move everything around and reorganise the whole setup. No one ever came to ask any questions. Food was ok, tasty, but just lukewarm and very salty and greasy. Some thighs needed cutting, but no knife, just forks, spoons and chopsticks, so I guess the customers have to manage with using their teeth, to cut the food. Zero nice customer service, no care whatsoever, no special treatment, no nice presentation, no good service at all. Just nicely decorated place, but very crowded and loud. Atmosphere wasn’t very pleasant. After the meal we had to wait for a long time , until someone cleared the table. We have ordered the desserts, but after the waiter cleaned the table, he just left two spoons on the naked surface of the table, not even straight, no napkins, no serviettes, nothing and later brought the plates with the desserts. I’m not sure what I should have used to clean my hands or face after. No one has come to us once, to ask if we needed anything or if everything was good, no one was explaining or recommending anything from the menu, no one was even smiling. Everyone was running around like crazy. If you can’t handle to serve all the people you accept to have in the restaurant, maybe you shouldn’t allow so many people to come or hire more staff. We don’t recommend the Ivy Asia in Chelsea. The experience wasn’t worth £160 at all. Waste of money. Maybe Mayfair is better, I don’t know. Ivy Garden is much better and nicer for sure. We are not planning to come...