Cakes & Bubbles By Albert Adrià

Want an experience? You won’t get it here. Go for the classics. There’s plenty in London. My partner received a voucher as a gift for this experience for two. I use the word “experience” specifically, as this exact word was used a few times during our interactions, yet there was no experience as such. First off, if you think this is a fancy experience, it is not. It is akin to an extremely overpriced sidestreet deli, where your coats are not taken to a cloakroom, but you sit with them at your table either placing them on an available chair or hanging them from the back of your chair. As this was a gift, we only assumed we could book/experience the cake tower and the booking was made a such as well as the waiter (an asian gentleman) initially explained it that way and left us at the table for some time waiting. We assumed that he went to prepare the “experience”, but turns out, he came back around 15 minutes later, telling us that we now have to choose what we want, we have £150 available to spend, it’s an open menu. Wow, thanks for telling me what our friends had spent on us. I was curious… So we booked the tower. It took another, around 15 minutes for the waiter to come back and slap napkins and spoons on the table. I attach a picture of how carelessly the spoons were thrown on the table. The tower arrived, as a first course, the waitress was nice, she explained the cakes, explained that after this, there is another course. I had to ask for my plate to be replaced as it was evidently not polished and was covered in greasy fingerprints. I attach a picture, again. I thought standards were high. I was wrong. The first glass was poured. We finished the tower and we had to wait for 15 minutes, before calling the assistant manager, for us to be served. We were completely ignored and neglected, left alone in the corner. We explained our predicament to the assistant manager and she seemingly took personal care of our table. A waiter arrived (different to the first waiter), cleared plates and, again, slapped spoons on the table, randomly. Interestingly, in front of the assistant manager. At this point I was already irate and I had to point it out to the assistant manager. I expected the waiter to place it on my right side, as is traditional, he just put it randomly on the table, in front of me, but put it on the right side of my partner. He had space to move around. Long story short, the above feedback did not improve the service an it remained the same - we were just left in the corner until the end of the “experience” and had to ask to be approached or drinks to be poured several times. The waiters, and there were plenty, were not noticing us. Quality control also needs to be looked at. Supposedly the world’s best pastry chef has put his name on it. I expected a falling apart wine cork cake not to make it to front of house. The light coloured was falling apart, when it should have been like the chocolate one. Cakes were okay, nothing to write home about. Experience and service - need I say more? All in all, my personal opinion is, that they know their market and customers and maybe they should do a bit of an analysis whether they care for service and delivery. Maybe they are just happy serving their customer base who pop in for a £15 latte or are happy to have the £48 (including truffle) lobster roll. And there’s plenty of those customers that I observed. They don’t care that their coat sits next to them or if a waiter follows any kind of established and expected service protocols as long as you pay your service charge. Want an experience? Go for the classics in London. Disappointing.