Best Service
1. The Foliage – London.
2. Number One at The Balmoral – Edinburgh.
3. du Parc des Eaux Vives – Geneva.
Worst Service
1. Craft – New York. Choking man at next table ignored.
2. Abobe – Canterbury. Dinning room empty of staff on more than one occasion, forgetful waiter, customer repeatly having to shut the door to keep out the draft.
3. Benares – London. Guests having to make a real effort to attract the waiters attention.
Funniest excuse for bad service
“I am so sorry, but your wine order did not get to me” from the waiter who took the order : Abobe – Canterbury.
Fastest Napkin folding time
1. Craft – New York. All they were good at, unfortunately.
2. The Foliage – London.
3. San Pau – Spain. They don’t fold them they bring you a new one on a silver tray!.
Best Bread
1. Number One at The Balmoral – Edinburgh
2. Tom Aikens – London.
3. du Parc des Eaux Vives – Geneva. Formally number 1, but they no longer do the seaweed bread.
Best Dessert
1. Tom Aikens – London. Prune delight.
2. Semproniana – Barcelona. White chocolate infantile.
3. RSJ – London. Poached pear and Perkin ice cream.
The Portrait Restaurants Peanut Butter Cheese Cake would have been up here too, if they had not taken it off the menu. Hate when that happens 🙁
Worst Dessert
1. Harveys – Ramsgate.
2. Abobe – Canterbury.
3. Alkima – Barcelona.
Most disappointing – Places where the hype was really out of step with our experience.
1. Hibiscus – London.
2. Harveys – Ramsgate.
3. Alfie’s – London.
4. Marcus Wareing at the Berkeley – London.
Best value for money
1. Bistro de I’Hotel de Ville – Vevey.
2. The Foliage – London. Fixed price lunch.
3. Tram Tram – Barcelona.
Worst value for money
1. Hibiscus – London.
2. Abobe – Canterbury.
3. Harveys – Ramsgate.
Best View
30|40 at the Gerkin – London.
Best for Afternoon Tea
1. The Berkeley, Pret a Portea – London.
2. The Athenaeum – London.
Best Advertizing Video
Eleven Madison Park – New York.
Best Web site for a Restaurant
1. Eleven Madison Park – New York. Simple to navigate, easy to book, stylish with very appetising pictures.
2. Cinc Sentits – Barcelona. Stylish, easy to find key information, good on-line booking facilities.
3. Per Se – New York. Provides a lot of information, uses a simple format.
Worse Web site for a Restaurant
1. Sketch – London. A complete nightmare to navigate. What were they thinking when they choose this?. A good design is one that is both stylish and practical, this one is just downright silly.
2. El Celler De Can Roca – Girona. Another navigational nightmare, although not in the same class as Sketch.
3. Mugaritz – San Sebastian. You have to put your cursor over flying images to see tooltips and access key parts of the site. Not very practical at all.
For an interesting artical on this subject see:-
Most pretentious, but in a bad way!
1. Beau Rivage Palace (La Rotonde) – Lausanne. This restaurant fortunately is gone, its been replaced by Anne-Sophie Pic’s new restaurant.
2. La Dama – Barcelona. See also the La Dama entry in the post :- Worst of the Worst .
See also :-