VQ Chelsea — Restaurant in London

This is an odd one. Went to VQ with two others at just before midnight. Queue was really unorganized and people seemed to be allowed to just push in front of others. Once inside the atmosphere is nice, staff seem constantly busy so getting their attention to place an order isn't fun. Onto the food. Just a heads up, nothing here is fresh. Everything comes from frozen and that's very clear in the quality of the food. We ordered 3 starters, hummus, spicy wings and halloumi fries. We loved our starters, in fact, we went away wishing we had only ordered starters because the mains were terrible and so were the sides. Three mains ordered: fish and chips. Chicken burger. Waffle and friend chicken. The chicken burger was fine, just bland like the fries. The waffle was from a packet and tasted like it, huge disappointment. The fish and chips was so disgusting we had it removed from our bill. The chips that came with it were BLACK. This is common when frozen chips are removed from the freezer too early. The fish was almost rancid. This is not an exaggeration, it stunk and tasted exactly as just about to go off fish does. So yeah, the manager removed it from the bill but nothing else. No replacement offered, just 'i'll take it off the bill'. We were asked what we wanted to replace it and assumed the small side of Mac and cheese we ordered would be comped since it didn't arrive until our entire table had finished eating but no, full price. We got four sides; hash browns, dirty fries, Mac and cheese and coleslaw. The coleslaw was alright, it got added to the bland chicken burger when it should already have been included. The dirty fries were awful, don't think the chef has ever had dirty fries. The hash browns were a rip-off, plan and simple. Came from a frozen bag, £7 for each little hash brown. You can see the size in the picture. What a joke. Mac and cheese was pretty good as was the iced mocha we got. Cocktail was £9 and had basically no alcohol in it.

The prices change at night and are not displayed on the menu. We paid £3 more than listed for every dish, and the £7.50 chicken burger cost 12.50. that's a £5 jump from the daytime prices. Once again, no menu we were given reflected this. The prices all showed the daytime prices. They also add a 12.5% for service. What service? As I mentioned before the waiters are so busy you never see them. In fact we couldn't order our mains until our starters were finished as they only came over to clear the table.

£106 for a terrible meal. As we said, we wished we had stuck with just starters. I wouldn't return but this doesn't matter to the business as they prey on people leaving the local bars. Terrible place, please go...

While the food itself was undeniably delicious, my overall experience was far from satisfying due to several issues that left us feeling misled and disappointed.

First, the portion sizes were shockingly small for the price. I ordered the French toast and received a single slice of French toast with a few pieces of fruit. We both ordered a side of scrambled eggs with cheese, yet we were charged the price of a full main dish for just the side. My husband ordered pancakes, which arrived as three tiny silver-dollar-sized pancakes—definitely not what we expected from the photos and descriptions online.

The real shock came when we received the bill. Our total came to £56 (about $70), which was far more than we anticipated. On top of the 13% service charge, we were also charged an additional 2.5% service fee, since it was past midnight. This extra fee was not disclosed to us beforehand, and we felt blindsided by the unexpected charges. We also weren’t informed that ordering a side would be priced as a main dish. These are all things that should have been made clear to us up front.

While we understand that service charges are common in some places, the lack of transparency regarding the fees was frustrating. If the food wasn't as tasty as it was, I would’ve given this review a much lower rating. As it stands, I am giving it 3 stars out of sheer generosity, but honestly, this experience left us feeling cheated.

To summarize:

The food portions are far too small for the price. The mandatory service charge is non-negotiable and came with no prior warning about additional fees. No one mentioned the extra charge for late-night dining. The "side" order was charged at the price of a main dish without prior explanation.

Had the food not been so good, this would have been a...

I found this place our first night in London. It was a couple of blocks from our flat and it caught my eye because it's open 24 hours. When the rest of my group arrived, we walked around looking for someplace that looked appealing for dinner and we had trouble agreeing on something, so this place won out.

I got the pasta bolognese , my hubby got the penne arrabiata with chicken, my daughter got the eggs benedict and we had a salad to share. I hadn't eaten all day and both the bolognese and the salad were quite good. The salad had a unique dressing with a grainy mustard and really was the best salad I had in all of London.

Our daughter loved the eggs benedict so much, she asked for it on several mornings during our trip. So we ended up ordering take away and I tried a variety of breakfast items.

I learned in general that breakfast at most places in our neighborhood consisted of pastry items, maybe with some bacon or sausage. VQ Chelsea had more of what we would consider traditional breakfast items.

The first day we ordered breakfast, I got an omelet with spinach, mushroom and swiss. It was a little bland and dry. Another day I ordered the breakfast wrap, which was definitely a step up. My favorite breakfast item was the spanish omelet. Very flavorful.

Service was good for both eat in and take away. Deliveroo made ordering...