The Lampery — Restaurant in London

For full context, my family and I are tourists visiting London for Christmas. When doing research about visiting, we saw many say that London shuts down for Christmas and that if you want to get a reservation somewhere your best bet is your hotels restaurant. So we were staying at Apex and eating at the Lampery.

When we made the reservation, we were told that our only option was the 90£ holiday menu, and we had to prepay to secure our reservation.

The service was really bad up until the point we told the managers/management about our poor experience. We sat down, and nobody got to us after waiting 20 minutes. We waived someone over to ask about our waiter, and after waiting, the waiter came to our table and took our order. The food comes out really slowly. I understand it’s a fine dining experience and a 6 course meal should take 2 hours, but we asked to expedite the rest of our meal because it had been an hour and a half and only 3 courses had come out. After asking to just get everything all at once, we only ended up getting 5/6 of our courses. I believe that if we hadn’t asked for things to be expedited and we had gotten our 6th course, the meal would’ve taken 3+ hours, which feels a little long. The service was very slow, and this was very frustrating. Moreover, a manager in a suit had come over to ask if we wanted more drinks and said that he would get it for us but never came back with them.

I would like to acknowledge that it is Christmas, and the restaurant was understaffed. I understand that the staff here are taking time away from their Holiday and their families to be able to work and serve my family. However, the restaurant very clearly did not have the bandwidth to serve as many people as they were seating. The restaurant should have taken less reservations or sat less people down.

This leads me to my next point that there were people there who were ordering off the regular menu and NOT the holiday one. When we booked, we were told that only the holiday menu was being offered, which again, is a 90£ 6 course meal. Personally, my family and I don’t like the fine dining style of food but understood our options in London were limited. However, after being told that our only option was this 90£ holiday menu that we had to pre pay for, but people who walked in without reservations got regular menus we were (what I feel is) reasonably upset. We were given false information about our options, and I feel that we were being upsold by the staff we communicated with via email who told us our only option was this holiday menu. The holiday menu is definitely overpriced, as you are paying for the fact that it is a Christmas night dinner. So after finding out we could’ve just walked in and gotten the cheaper regular menu, we were very upset by this because of the false information communicated to us by the staff when we originally made the reservation.

The staff told us that the walk ins got the regular room service menus, but I saw things being ordered that were not on the room service menu of the hotel. So it didn’t seem like they were really running a limited kitchen, as the staff member tried to make it seem. On top of that, the people who just walked in were being served more fast than the people who ordered off the Holiday menu.

I want to acknowledge and apologize for the fact that the behavior of one of my family members was disruptive and rude. I know that I also got very emotional because this was a very horrible Christmas dinner experience that was a result of a lot of things, but the bad service definitely made the experience worse.

When we got the check, the waiter rang up the 90£ per person, but we had already prepaid. It seemed like prepaying wasn’t something we even needed to do, so whoever we were communicating with while booking the restaurant really tried to upsell us and get us to book and pay for an overpriced meal and incredibly poor service before we even got to London. I appreciate the staff attempting to remedy the situation, but nothing can remedy a horrible 600£...

What a venue!!! Planning our wedding with Anja, Razvan and the team was a fantastic process throughout that delivered beyond expectation. The Lampery's features needed no extra decoration; and we were lucky with the weather so that the bi-folding doors were open on the terrace exposing the amazing green foliage ceiling which was perfectly lit on our beautiful August summer wedding afternoon.

Compliments to Marcelo the head chef who, alongside his team, turned out a flawless and artistic three course meal for 85 people, with each lamb cutlet, risotto and dessert delivered to perfection. Our guests were enamoured with joy and we are still receiving compliments about how tasty the food was. The portion sizes of the three course meal and sides were generous; no one was left hungry. The team also got creative with some bespoke extras for the evening – the cheese boards and popcorn went down well, and we were happy that our evening guests all managed to get something to snack on.

The Lampery staff and management were welcoming and generous, and catered our every need; each and every guest was taken care of with attention to detail, and thought put in to those whose meals required dietary alterations. Prosecco and wine glasses were topped up throughout the reception and meal; a touch which has been noted and complimented on by many of our guests. The service from when we arrived until we stumbled out at the end was flawless.

Further thought was put into our stay at the Apex City of London that evening; we entered our room to a surprise gift of champagne and a hand written card which was a lovely personal touch. Anja made sure a table was booked for us for breakfast the following morning right at the front of the terrace, and we were also offered the option of room service.

We would highly recommend the Lampery to anyone having a wedding reception; it delivered the relaxed cocktail-lounge vibe that we wanted to project, and there aren’t many venues that couple great decor, modern facilities, space for eating, relaxing and dancing, and staff who really care about you all in one place.

The Lampery was an amazing find that will go down as the scene of one greatest days of our lives, and we are so very appreciative of and grateful to every single person who put in such hard work before, during and even after our wedding celebrations. We felt very special getting...

I give atmosphere a 5 because there was a constant display off passive aggressive behaviour.

Ate here for Christmas Day, and tbh, I was on the fence prior due to fake reviews, and I really wish I had not bothered.

We walked in as there was clearly some availability, and initially the manager tried to imply they may not be able to seat us. A minute later they sat us down, so the initial interaction felt quite unnecessary. Bear in mind it was 7pm, so their rush had clearly passed.

It was very clear from the beginning they were understandably quite under staffed and under pressure.

It took 15 minutes from when we sat down to order drinks. I paid £80 for a bottle of rose which was not chilled. Placed an iceless bucket, which also was not cold. We ordered two bottles of sparking which were clearly refilled bottles, and again flat and warm.

My partner asked that I didn’t complain as it was Christmas.

Our waiter was stretched very thin and being spoken too appallingly by management, so it was impossible to ask for issues to be corrected. Management were shouting at staff, and the chef could be heard screaming throughout the restaurant.

I paid £90 each for a Christmas set dinner, in which they served me a preprepared turkey steak. I sent it back in return for the beef wellington. This caused quite the stir as the wellington didn’t come back for nearly 25 minutes and I could hear management talking about us directly behind is in quite a passive aggressive manner.

The starter was duck patte which was ok.

The dessert was awful, it was an apple crumble or pie, without any pastry or crumble, just apple sauce which a scoop of ice cream.

I was not served my welcome champagne, and I didn’t stay for my after dinner coffee as I just wanted to get the hell out.

To add, the main was served with about 4 potatoes between two, which were good, and a genuine handful of veg. No gravy offered or sauce, no condiments offered. £293 pounds????

I saw two tables be compt their entire bill because of how bad yesterday was.

Honestly really p’ed off. Wish I went for a...