Never fearing the challenge of finding somewhere nice too eat ( see previous 15 bad experiences) we ventured over to the Brunswick centre at Russel Square (London) to check out the new facilities & see if they had managed to make it less scary around there than it used to be. We originally intended to go to the Hare & Tortoise noodle bar for a cheaper (and better because they do cheap sushi) meal than Wagamamma but it was packed so I thought we should try out Carluccios. I have wandered past many of them in the last 6 months but never managed to find time to go (too many dodgy places to eat in first) see in we went………..
Carluccios is a chain of Italian coffee shops & Deli’s who happen to serve food as well, or at least that what the website seems to tell me. Find them at www.carluccios .com where they will welcome you with this introduction (saving me doing it)
Welcome to Carluccios
Priscilla and Antonio opened their first Italian food shop in 1991 in Covent Garden bringing the finest quality regional Italian food to London.
In those days, only a few products were sold and the labels were hand-written with care. Today, that same care is taken and we have created Caffès with food shops to be able to invite our customers to eat and shop in a happy, bustling environment.
The entrance to the shop is quite inviting, theres a coffee counter & basically a shop selling lots of Italian food products. Theres olive oil from Sicily, Wild boar ragu, Cuttlefish Ink sauce, Capers, artichokes, etc, all waiting to be snapped up unless you just want a meal so we quickly bypassed this & went to get a seat.
We were greeted almost immediately by a smiley waitress who even laughed when I asked for the smoking section even though she must have heard it a million times by now. The table wasn’t exactly the best one in the place, too close to the waiter station but at least that meant we were being passed regularly so we got served quite quickly.
Absolutely starving we ordered the bread tin & a bowl of olives with our wine & water. The Bread was a selection of crackers,breadsticks & actual bread with olive oil which made a nice change & the olives were fat green pitted ones as I like them (not sure if they were queen, maybe just princess) The wine list had a good selection ranging from £12-£23 with most of them falling around £17, we took the Rose but it fell quite far from the Pizza Express rose mark, a little too heavy & dark for my taste but we still managed to force it down..
For main courses we had Giardiniera pasta, a penne with deep fried balls of spinach, garlic & chilli. I wasn’t impressed with the taste of this that I had. The balls of spinach were too contrasting in their crunchyness compared to the soft pasta. My friend had a chicken Milanese, which was simply a flattened breast of chicken coated in breadcrumbs with salad. Now I didn’t try this but one look was enough to put me off what appeared to be a findus crispy pancake – see photos I had the seabass which was actually probably the biggest mistake of the 3 of us (again see the picture). Not exactly tough but neither was it melting in the mouth. At £11.75 it was the most expensive dish of the 3 & I expected it to be a bit more impressive. The tomato salsa was bland & one of the accompanying potatoes wasn’t properly cooked, As with the wine, we all managed to eat it all but felt a little disappointed overall & still abit hungry.
So to puds Chocolate pudding for £4.95 & meringue at £4.95. What has happened to London restaurants & their dessert menus? Why do we now pay 2/3 of the price of a main course for what seems to be shrinking portions of sweets? The chocolate pudding was so-so & the meringue, well, it was just a meringue with raspberries on it – how can that be £4.95!!!
We were there for around an hour so everything was reasonably spaced time-wise. The toilets were nice, clean, spacious, the décor pleasant, music at the correct volume etc but something didn’t appeal to me about the place. Not just the food which as you may imagine I am becoming used to being poor value but the whole experience just lacked something. At a cost of £62 with wine for 3 it may not seem too expensive but with a tip on top youre well over £20 a head where I begin to expect a bit more of an experience along with the food. Maybe they should have stuck with being a deli / coffee shop rather than trying to serve mains as the produce seems to be there, as you can see in the shop, just not the skill to turn it into something that little bit different enough to entice me back
