Reviews: Bad Dining Experience with Patisserie Concerto London

As a frequent traveler who has been to the north America, a lot of Asian countries, and a few European countries, I have visited a lot of food outlets. Not wanting to go any place more than once, this trip alone I have gone to around 40 different eating places with wide range of price points and quality. Thus, I have my fair share of unpleasant dining experiences which involved either bad food,  bad services, or, both.

When I encounter a lousy food outlet, what I will do is to make a mental note to myself, and move on. In London I have a very unpleasant experience with Patisserie Concerto (sister company of Caffe Concerto) of Knightsbridge, to the extent I have to say something. The curious-combination of high price, so-so quality of food, and indifferent waiters really made it a winner for a bad-service award and set as a good example for fellow caterer providers what NOT to do, and potential customers where to avoid.

The incident is as follows:

I and my parents went to Harrods in Knightsbridge for some last minute shopping, and once we were done, we just strolled around to look for food. Patisserie Concerto came into sight with its eye catching Salmon Steak sign board. There we went in and got the first ill-treatment: The waiter kind of forced us to sit right at the door, while there were a lot of vacant tables inside the premise. Tired and hungry, we didn't think much and sat down, and the waiter took our order.



Everything was as usual: drinks and food served and we started to eat, until there were two men came and sat just right outside the door and started smoking. They were gone when the above picture was taken. They sat at the gray shirt guy's table, whose face I put an 'A' for easy identification. We sat at the table right behind the white shirt guy I marked with a 'B'.

Since there was no partition wall to separate the smoking and non-smoking zones within the premise, the smoke flew in and choked us. When I complaint this to the waiter, he just shrugged and said he could do nothing. He mentioned he couldn't stop customers smoking outside of the premise.

I do understand customers are allowed to smoke outside, but it is the premise's responsibility to ensure the smoke will not flow indoor! Or else what is the point of forbidding smoking when there are plenty supply of second hand smoke for indoor customers? The waiter didn't try to help by offering to change our place even though at that time the premise was only around 40% occupied and there were a lot of vacant tables inside. He just walked away with no help, and no apology. We were appalled by this kind of bad service and worse still, they charged us 12.5% or £4 in our case, of 'service charge'. But what service we had been getting? Smoked meal with attitude-problem waiter?

On top of all these, the food was not tasty at all compared to all the meals we had had thus far: salmon was not fresh, spaghetti was too sour, and coffee was lukewarm.

My lesson learned in UK is to go for food in crowded bars, and usually there will be cheap and good food available.

Of course, for those who are masochistic, Patisserie Concerto will be a good place to waste money, eat tasteless food, get shitty services, and kill yourselves in second-hand smoke.