Gauthier Soho, Soho

Gauthier Soho
21 Romilly Street
W1D 5AF

Date of Last Visit: Wednesday, August 4, 2010

The Victims: Rutton, Kainaz, Richard, Mireia, Al

The Damage: 65 quid each. (Sorry, new American keyboard doesn't have GBP symbol!)

The Background: Less than 48 hours to go before I leave London. The movers and my sea container left earlier that afternoon. It's an odd feeling.

So we meet up at Gauthier Soho to celebrate my impending departure. I ring the doorbell. They let me in. I use the ladies, and then they try to seat me at the table. The table, however, is shoved up against the wall. And they don't seem to think this is a problem. So I start to move the table out myself and they come over to help and inch the table out. Literally. An inch. Not far. I'm perplexed.

I'm even more perplexed when, once we arrange the table to my liking, I sit down at the table and it rocks. Severely. They move the table around again a bit and it seems to be better but not really.

The rest of the gang arrives and it becomes abundantly clear that the table is very unsteady. The staff first tell us that it's impossible to fix because "the floor is old." Um…I think a napkin underneath one of the legs will work acceptably well. The staff prefer to move the table around a bit to find a more even spot of flooring and it's better, but Richard can't put his elbows on the table or all our dishes will go flying.

Odd.

And then things get worse. After all that, the staff ignore us. For a very long time. The only staff member who doesn't ignore us is the water girl and she fills my glass so many times when I've barely had just a sip that I've had to tell her to go away and not come back until I ask her to.

Odd. 

But finally we place our orders for our starters. Chilled broad bean soup for me. And I'm glad the soup is cold because it takes 45 minutes for it to arrive anyway.

Odd.

And then I have the fillet of angus beef, and it's nice. It's good. No complaints.

There were some bright spots to the evening. We put Richard (Italian) in charge of the wines and the wines he selects with the Italian wine steward are unbelievably inexpensive. I was expecting to spend 80 to 90 quid a head, and our meal came to 65 per person. And the summer truffle risotto was amazingly lovely. I should have gotten that instead of the chilled broad bean soup. Oh yes, and we liked the cheese plate. It was very well done. A lot choice. Ah…and they boxed up the sweets at the end of the meal and sent us all home with them. That was VERY nice.

The Verdict: Eh. Too many issues and the bright spots were too few in comparison to the odd spots.