Portobello Gold

I'm writing again to say *** £31.50 for 2 tiny espresso martinis in a pretentious haughty bar that used to be a brilliant pub. Absolutely terrible. Don't waste your time or money! The service was snobby too. Why is necessary to charge £3.50 for service to make a drink. A poor joke.

The positive is that the food is excellent. The negatives are: - the music is played incredibly loudly. This, combined with the tables being overly crowded mean that if you want to have a conversation with your fellow diners without shouting, it’s difficult - the service is extremely poor - it’s overpriced for what is a noisy bar with a restaurant on the side - it was fortunate that we checked our bill carefully as we had about a £100 of a bar bill added to our food bill. When we politely questioned it, instead of the waiter taking it off, knowing full well we hadn’t had any drinks downstairs but come straight to our pre-booked table, the bar manager was called to check us out. When friends who had also dined there said the same thing had happened to them. It gelt like too much of a coincidence - we were at Gold for a celebratory birthday meal. A birthday cake had been ordered and confirmed via multiple emails. No cake turned up. Pretty poor service, yet again The food at Gold is excellent so it could become a ‘go to’ local restaurant for us as we live round the corner, but it’s currently marred by the issues described above. Currently, this restaurant is for people who want to eat well, not speak to anyone at their table and don’t mind overpaying for deafening music and terrible service and having to audit their bill at the end of the evening.

A busy venue with a nice bar where you ca people watch and have light bites. We were there to catch up though the venue was fairly loud, which added to the experience, so we ended up mostly people watching! Food is mostly good, too.

The service at this restaurant is beyond shocking. The table that we had booked wasn’t ready and we were told to stand in the entrance way and that it would be 5 minutes. It was heaving and the staff couldn’t have been less interested. Ten minutes of being bumped against and complaining before the manager comes over and offers us a drink…which never came. Then we were seated and it took 30 minutes for drinks to arrive, they had been sat on the counter and the ice was completely melted. Okay so the food is really good but this place needs a management upheaval and a focus on service. Avoid unless you like extremely poor service and the resounding echoes of I’m sorry as waiter after waiter apologises to table after table.

Sublime food … stunning setting and superb service. Love to have my divorce celebration here ! Hopefully the chefs can help remove the bitter taste left and replace with something sweet. Been a while since I’ve been as excited about returning to somewhere so special. Thank you. Tracey

My friend chose this restaurant and, as always, she picked well. Because I’m a vegetarian I was wary when they suggested sharing plates rather than just ordering what you want personally, but it worked well as the portions were a good size. It was all really delicious. I didn’t think quite so much to the cocktails though. Some of the staff weren’t the cheeriest but the gent that served us was lovely and made great recommendations. I also thought it was quite reasonably priced the the amount that we ate and drank as a group.

Amazing lunch. Every course fabulous. Service from Mary was outstanding, she was very authentic and made us feel very well looked after - awesome recommendations (the short rib and semifreddo, wow) Cool atmosphere and happy kitchen. Can’t go wrong! We will be back!

This is a lovely little restaurant / bar on the portobello road. We sat outside for drinks, which was very nice. Staff were very friendly and attentive. Would love to go back and eat there sometime. The inside was lovely with a rear garden too and the toilettes were very clean.

Lovely food, helpful, friendly staff, great ambiance. Would have given it 5/5 except that the wine is so heavily marked up. This seems common now post-Covid. We wanted a bottle of rosé with our lunch, and were offered a bottle of Bandol Provence rosé at an eye-watering £62. We live part of the year in Provence, and we know that a decent bottle retails at around €10-€12, maybe €20-€25 in a restaurant in Nice. So we chose a 75cl carafe of the perfectly good house rosé at £29, and noticed that a lot of other customers had done the same. Nevertheless, we will definitely go back on our next trip to London.