First Floor Restaurant - Portobello Road, London

In my opinion First Floor Restaurant is a little odd. It lies on top of a pub smack damn in the middle of Portobello Road and If you blink you’d miss it. I did, and I’ve been down Portobello more times than I’ve signed my name.

The pub downstairs looked nice enough from the outside but it gave little insight into what to expect when heading to the first floor. Struck by crisp white tablecloths, chandeliers, candles and statues we entered with a little trepidation (we only went for Sunday lunch so all of the fanciness felt a bit much). 

The bad points to begin with: Eddy was a bit bothered by the fact we were sitting in lavish settings and his knife looked like it had been wiped clean from the previous customer. A quick knife change from the table behind us solved that but shouldn’t have been needed. Also their decor was heavily reliant on melting candles. So the radiator next to us was effectively made of wax from the years of dripping that it endured. And finally the service. It was not at all bad but a tiny bit slow. The food came out pretty promptly but I saw the waitress cutting our bread and leaving it there on the side for at least 5 minutes before she brought it over. Small things, but they matter.

Eddy and I opted for the Sunday lunch, mine Chicken, his Roast Rib of Beef. The myriad of accompaniments were vast so with each bite came a new combination of flavours. My roast chicken came with a yorkie, braised red cabbage, a meagre, thin and flavourless serving of bread sauce, an annoyingly perfect disk of stuffing (give me a good dollop of steaming stuffing, it's Sunday lunch!), and all the standard veg. His was relatively similar, with the exception of a horseradish sauce, and both were not bad at £14 and £16 respectively.

My friend Rosie was there too and being a veg she was happy with the choices they had. She went for the Lentil and Quinoa Burger with Triple Cooked Chips (£11). We joked about the fact that restaurants these days feel the need to tell us that our chips are cooked three times. Does it honestly make them taste better if we know that fact? They were chips. Good and crispy, normal, standard and fine. A note to all restaurants: save the ink and just print ‘chips.’ It makes no bloody difference how you cook them if they taste good.

She was ok with it and that instigated a debate about the fact that these days you often find that going out to a restaurant is nice. It’s just nice. The food is ok, the vibe ok, the service ok, but I remember a time when going out for dinner was an experience and seemingly now if you want that you have to take out a small loan to do so or queue on a waiting list for years. Rosie works with Mr Blumenthal on commercials and states that he gave a much coveted table to a crew member. That bumps one of us down the line til 2020.

I'm very aware of my misgivings but I can say that I cook better than most restaurants I eat at. I know this, but when I go out I do so partly for the break of cooking and to review the food. And with that I can honestly say that in the last year I have been to only 2 restaurants that I’ve thought I couldn’t do better at at home.

So all in all it was nice. Just nice. The decor and opulence made it feel like more than it really was. If I had that lunch in a pub I’d review it higher but I expected more because of the surroundings. It’s an amazing building and beautifully decorated but the food didn’t live up to it’s decorative charm.

First Floor Restaurant

7/10

186 Portobello Road

London, W11 1LA

Tel: 0207 243 0072

www.firstfloorportobello.co.uk