Byron

222 Kensington High Street
London
W8 7RG

020 7361 1717


A previous visit to Byron had been a bit of a disaster: wrong wine, long wait because no gas to cook, no side orders. To the restaurant's great credit though, in a model of good customer relations, they didn't charge me anything when I said that though I acknowledged there were circumstances beyond their control, I wasn't altogether happy. When I wrote the blog post (late on a Saturday evening) they went one further. The MD of the group took the trouble to send me an email first thing Sunday morning explaining all the problems they had had and offering a further gratis meal to L.O. and I whenever we wanted to go back. Well what blogger could resist such exemplary new media relationship handling so L.O. and I, whirring having just taken off the 3D specs post Alice in Wonderland over the road at Odeon High Street Kensington, returned.

Well I said before that I thought the quality of the meat was very good and so it was again. This time, since the Byron sauce wasn't to my taste, I had the classic £6.25: just lettuce, tomato, onion and pickle: much better and you could really taste the beef. Ok this is very picky (and again personal, but hey its an upmarket burger place)... I like English mustard and I like real mustard! There is just no comparison with the preserved stuff in a jar. This and some real whole grain mustard would make a difference to me!


To try (and it really was far too much and we knew it would be!) we had sides of french fries, £2.75, home made skin-on chips £3.00, onion rings £2.75, and courgette fries £3.00. One of these to share would be quite enough! Of these the courgette fries were the best; very crispy but you could still taste the real vegetable underneath. The onion rings similarly crispy. The fries and skins I found the most disappointing: a bit soft, flabby. Maybe we were just a bit unlucky with this particular batch. We followed this with a huge, so just as well we shared, caramel and honeycomb sundae (with vanilla ice cream and crunchie bits) £4.50. It was very sweet, not sophisticated, but I'm sure would be a winner with kids.

Last time there was a procession of tupperware, bin liners etc between the centre stage kitchen and the back. This wasn't the case tonight which was a big improvement. I find the place a bit starkly overlit but families with kids might well like that. Maybe the lighting, though, could be lowered a bit later in the evening? But am getting too prescriptive here. Really the burgers are very good and that's the main point. Its really inappropriate to comment on the service this time since we were on a set up freebie but for the record it was exemplary.