Med Kitchen (West End)

Food	Service	Atmosphere	Value
5.5	5.5	5.17	4.33

Went to this place for a Saturday night meal for two but sorry to say that I wouldn’t recommend Med Kitchen or go again.
My Moroccan sausages with cous cous, though delivered quickly, was a disappointment. For some reason they served an eggcup sized portion of cous cous and a large side of chips which is rather an ill-thought combination I thought! We opted for a mid-priced bottle of wine at £17. For that price you generally get something pretty nice in most London restaurants and bars, but I’ve had much better for £12 elsewhere. Banoffee pie is a safe choice and was actually a pleasant end to the meal. It went a little way towards sweetening the taste of the bill when it came, though at over £60 for two (two courses and bottle of wine) it was hardly good value.
If you are looking for a reliable/inexpensive choice of restaurant in London and prefer to play it safe by going to a chain restaurant, then there are far better options than Med Kitchen. Avoid it and go for Strada or even Spaghetti House.

MIranda - Wednesday, June 16, 2010

I arrived at Med Kitchen at about 1 o'clock for lunch on a saturday. The party I was with were seated immediately. The service and waitresses was good as the food was served quickly. However, the atmosphere was dull and unfortunately so was the food, for a London restaurant I was very dissapointed. The food was presented with no care or time at all and unfortunately the flavour of the food was bad. I would not recommend eating here.

Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Good quality meal at very reasonable price and efficient service. Ideal location for pre-theatre meal. Would definitely recommend. Note service charge is automatically added but this is probably common across London and service was efficient and attentive.
Only downside-The lighting is poor but this probably only matters if you have some visual impairment.

Alan Pollard - Monday, March 22, 2010

We arrived late and were in a rush to get to the theatre, they were very accomodating and our food arrived quickly. The food was amazing, some of the best I've ever had! Extremely good value for money with a great atmosphere and friendly staff!

Saturday, March 13, 2010

This is one of the worst places I have ever been to in London.
We were a group of 5 for a friends birthday dinner and had booked for 7.30pm. We arrived at 7pm intending to have some drinks at the bar if there was no room for us but there appeared to be space and we were shown to a table. Right around the corner at the back where no-one else was dining. There was no atmosphere at this end and it meant that getting any attention from waiting staff was very difficult.
We had chosen a special offer menu which included a bellini and 3 courses for £15. The menu was pretty rubbish, but we thought, what do you expect for £15 and decided to order from it anyway as you would expect everything to be tasty. After waiting for 20 minutes to even be asked whether we would like a drink, the birthday girl went to the bar and paid for a bottle of champagne in cash. When the waiter arrived with it 5 minutes later he proceeded to open the champagne formula 1 style and ended up spilling some with the cork going awol, hopefully not hitting anyone. When he poured it he ended up spilling even more, I could not believe it and told him it was my friends birthday and perhaps he owed her a drink for spilling some of her champagne. He had the attitude that he didnt care. We tried to tell him we were ready to order but he disappeared.
When he finally came back he was pretty rude if we asked any questions, I ordered the soup and asked if it came with a slice of bread. He said not unless I paid for it. I said fine but I just want one slice and he replied that he would have to charge me for it. Again I said this was fine but I didnt want them to bring lots of bread as I was the only one eating soup. When the starters came out, no bread came so I had to wave to another waitress to get some and they ended up bringing 6 massive slices. I had to ask for butter as they didnt bring any. By the time this came all of my friends had eaten their starters. The soup and bread both tasted good, apparently the eggs florentine were tasty but very small and again could have benefited from some bread, if they had brought it earlier then they would have had some. The bruchetta was OK but very uninspiring, and unauthentic.
In between the starters and mains we wanted to order 2 bottles of wine and again getting attention was difficult. A waitress was passing so we flagged her down and asked for the 2 bottles. 5 minutes later our waiter came and asked if we would like some wine. I said that we had already asked his colleague and he then said that she had forgotten what we had asked for. We placed the order with him. The mains arrived before the wine - the salmon meal was tiny and the salmon overcooked, one of the pieces didnt even look like salmon. The chicken meals were apparently tasty and so were the side orders of veg. I ordered the vegetables with chickpeas and cous cous thinking it was a healthy option but it was absolutely swimming in grease, I cannot emphasise enough how much liquid fat was in my bowl and there were not many chickpeas. I just ate around the fat as much as I could. The veg were tasty and unsurprisingly the cous cous tasted quite greasy.
Whilst the waiter was pouring our drinks he was not using the available space effectively and leaned across my friend causing her to have to move backwards.
Onto the desserts.... my cheesecake was very nice and tasty, but one of the portions my friend had tasted nice but was still frozen in the middle. The friend who had the creme brulee had the worst dessert though. It was raw and unset, it actually looked like custard. She tried to eat it but couldnt. She called a manager over who faked surprise that it wasnt set and asked if she would like another dessert or a coffee. She said no as she couldnt face having anything else. We asked for the bill. And waited and waited. 25 minutes later the waiter finally came and we asked for the bill. When it came, they had the cheek to charge us for the champagne that my friend had aready paid for and also service! We called the manager over and pointed out the error on the bill. My friend who ate the creme brulee asked it to be taken off the bill as it was inedible and the manager started arguing that the menu was set but eventually backed down and brought a revised bill. We did try to give him all of this feedback in a constructive way, but he was very argumentative and not interested in hearing our feedback at all and then just said 'well you dont have to pay for service' and walked away - as if we were even going to. When we paid him, he said 'well I would say see you again but I know I wont' - well that just says it all really. No, he definitely will not see any of us again after that terrible experience.

keennorth - Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Ah Med Kitchen. Ideal for a pre-theatre dinner we thought. They had what was touted as a pre-theatre menu, at £15 for three courses and a Bellini. Brilliant my friends and I thought, we had about 1hr 15, that should hopefully be enough time. After all, a professional restaurant offering a pre-theatre menu should be slick enough to handle a table of six in good time.
We didn't get off to a great start as one of our party was stuck in a traffic jam - unfortunate but unavoidable, and something we apologised for. She'd be about 15 minutes late we explained as we ordered our starters, would it be possible to hold off bringing her starter? (she'd told us what she wanted to order) Our waitress said that would be ok, she seemed totally understanding.
Our first problem was with the drinks - only half the Bellinis arrived, and what followed was 10 minutes of arm waving to try and attract ANYONE'S attention before we could get the rest. Then our starters arrived - all of them. The waitress dumped them on the table unceremoniously, and when one of our party explained the issue with our late joiner she just scowled. We asked if they could keep it warm for a few more minutes, and after some arguing she stomped off. She returned a minute or so later, plonking the starter on the table, telling us that it was too much 'hassle' for the chef to keep the starter warm. And yes, she actually used the word 'hassle'. We explained if that was the case, we'd need a new one when our friend arrived. The waitress stomped off again.
Finally our friend arrived, and yes, I appreciate that late arrivals can cause restaurants problems, but this was out of our hands. Her starter came, and she ordered her main at the same time to speed things up. Cue more arm waving to get her Bellini.
After a while, all our plates were cleared (we'd been there about 35 minutes at this point). And very swiftly, a main course arrived. Great! But after a few minutes, we realised that main course was the only one we were getting. We’re still not sure what happened, but it somehow our mains had been lost, or cancelled sometime after ordering our late arrival’s main course.
We were understandably annoyed, as we’d been there 50 minutes, and now had about 25 minutes to eat 2 courses, pay and get to the theatre. We asked to see the manager who finally wandered over, leaned against the wall and looked like he couldn’t care less that we were unhappy. We explained the situation, and to his (very limited) credit, our mains arrived about 5 minutes later. Incidentally, the food was hugely underwhelming. The salmon portion was doll sized and the Arrabiata pasta was penne with tasteless tomato sauce, and an overwhelming kick of chilli.
By the time we’d eaten our mains (very quickly) we had about 10 minutes before the curtain went up. By this point we’d been in Med Kitchen for about 1hr 20. One of our party went off to find the manager again – who hadn’t returned to check on us, and nor had we had any kind of apology from any member of staff – which took a while, as he was strangely elusive. Our friend explained everything, including the fact that we now had no time for puddings, and that we expected some kind of compensation. The manager disappeared again, and came back with the offer ‘You can pay £10.50 each. That’s all you’re getting’. Charming. Considering the whole meal deal was £15 and we hadn’t even managed to have a pudding it was an insult. But we were damned if we were missing our show because of some egotistical, rude restaurant manager so we paid up and left very quickly.
Needless to say, none of us will be returning. And we did have one moment of happiness – a tourist was reading the menu outside the window where we were sitting, and we managed to attract his attention and put him off coming inside. Small things.

Peterkin - Sunday, February 07, 2010

Quite disappointed really. Booked for a relaxed hen do lunch on a sunday for the £15 for 3 course and a bellini. Good price, but the food wasn't great and the service was unfriendly and the whole experience underwhelming. Won't go back.

Monday, July 13, 2009

The food was delicious very satisfying meal all round. Cosidering this place is in a busy tourist location, the atmosphere felt relaxed and the service was prompt. I was in a large part of 10 and all the meals and starters were served on time and tasted delicious. Unlike the previous reviews I beleive that all London's restautrants include a 12.5% service charge which you can ask to be taken off if you feel the service is not up to scratch. I for one was happy to pay the service charge as the staff were friendly and helpful - including 1 waiter who helped my grandfather down the stairs to the toilet!

Genoa Saris - Wednesday, March 04, 2009

A good example of an all too familiar unsatisfying dining experience in London where the combination of mediocre food and half-hearted service somehow warrant a £25-£30 price tag. Plus, as others have noted, the current trend of automatically adding 12½% to the bill for the pleasure of it all.
There are lots of places in London you could eat well for this sort of money - sadly, this isn't one of them. The menu plays safe with standard gastropub fare (lamb shank, confit of duck etc), which is not only uninspiring but lacks quality too.
To be fair to Med Kitchen their High St Ken restaurant was actually quite good, so I am puzzled as to why this branch should be so poor.

Tim - Friday, December 28, 2007

Had I known that this was one of those restaurants where a service charge is added to your bill for you I would not have dined here as tip should be left in recognition of good service, not expected on top of the food bill. The value for money review would be higher if they hadnt done this.
The service was ok- not exceptional, the waited didnt smile at us once.
The food was really really nice, their home mande chips were very good and the portion of my cabonara was very satisfying. They did get my order wrong, which they didnt apologise for but my wait for the correct dish was not too long.
They charged me in my bill for the wrong dish as well.
I dont recall any light music being played in the restaurant (maybe that's a good thing with some of the rubbish that is belted out so loud you cant hear yourself think at some restaurant) but the atmosphere was still quite nice.
it was fairly quiet when i went. good location for pre-theatre meals.

Kim - Tuesday, June 05, 2007