Little Bay, Farringdon

Hello all! Throughout the month of February, the Farringdon branch of Little Bay shot to fame (in Metro and the London Lite) by allowing people to pay whatever they wanted for food and service. Piggy banks emptied, we ventured in. We were:

James
Laura
Linz
Pete
Sam
Vicki

The restaurant's in a bit of a transport black spot and so some of us struggled to get there. I had to walk from London Bridge, Vicki was stuck waiting 20 minutes for a bus and ended up getting the tube while Sam got a cab as she didn't fancy walking from Islington due to her big, pregnant clown feet.

Because of the highly unusual nature of the deal, we had to think carefully about our approach to the evening. Firstly, Laura had the great idea of checking the menus at the other branches to see in advance what the prices were. We'd been a couple of times before and it's actually a very cheap place for somewhere that's traditionally done pretty good food. Personally, I had a rough figure in my head for food and service and decided to work up or down from there based on actual experience.

The first three points of note were all negative. Laura reported that there was wee on the unisex toilet seats (minus 1 point), the waiter had a chronic case of Bill Oddie (minus 1 point in normal circumstances, minus 2 points every time he leaned over the table unleashing some weapons grade funk). And finally there was no butter with the bread on the table until we asked for some. Poor darts to start with but they were getting increasingly busy so you have to cut them some slack.

We ordered starters which came quickly. Sam and I had garlic mushrooms which were deemed to be "pretty good but nothing special". Vicki and James had the some kind of goat's cheese souffle which, again, was passable. Finally Linz had the soup which I shall describe in 3 words:

Worst. Soup. Ever.

Linz had eaten quite a lot of it and then I thought I heard her say something like "this is the worst soup I've ever had in a restaurant". An astonishing statement I'm sure you'll agree so I made her repeat it to make sure I hadn't misheard. She said it again. "This is possibly the worst soup I've ever had in a restaurant". Now Linz in no stranger to fine dining so this could have been an exaggeration but when we passed the bowl down for others to take a spoonful, it was confirmed that this thin, watery, fairy-liquid-tasting, unseasoned mess was indeed the worst soup in the history of the world.

Oh dear. Not a great start for Little Bay. We suspected that they may have taken their eye off the ball since the start of the month when all the journalists were in. We also felt that they had confused good service with very fast service. The speed or ordering and delivering plates was phenomenal but I don't think that's necessarily a good thing. It's actually a bit disconcerting and allows images of microwaves to sneak into your head.

The mains were decent enough but again, nothing great. All dishes which involved potatoes suffered from them being a little bit undercooked. Although I do have to say that my steak was cooked properly rare instead of "English-restaurant-rare" which was a plus. Deserts arrived soon after without spoons (which were then brought over and dumped on the table in a bunch instead of being handed out. Shocking).

Do I sound like a service snob? Who cares? Bad service is bad service and this was bad service. Linz's main course wasn't even placed between her knife and fork. It was just absent-mindedly put on the side of the table for James and Linz to decide between them who it belonged to. These are basic things which if you can't get right you're struggling.

What's weird is that I've been before and had very positive experiences. So why do this experiment to get people through the door if you're not going to do it right? It just means I'm now less likely to go there again when it's full price, which I might have done otherwise.

Deserts were shocking. Ok that's an over-reaction. Mine and Linz's deserts were shocking. A massive blob of chocolate angel delight substance slapped onto a plate. Linz kept repeating "I can't believe they haven't put it in a pot or something" in a confused near whimper. The pistachio creme brulees were pretty good and James and Sam lucked out with cheese and profiteroles respectively.

Sigh.

So, what did we pay? We all worked out what we wanted to pay for each course and then averaged it out. We thought service only deserved 5%. As per the rules, the wine and drinks were full price but we were happy to pay this as the house white was rather tasty. It ended up at £11 each for food + service plus another fiver for drinks.

If you're interested, this is how much each person decided to pay for each course.