please empty your brain below
Cantina del Ponte?

NLW | 25.01.13 - 7:18 a.m. | #

Just think, in the US you'd have to pay 5% or so sales tax and 20% on top... of course you know this before you sit down, but it still grates.

John | 25.01.13 - 8:01 a.m. | #

Whereas we in the UK only pay (typically) a 12.5% service charge and 20% VAT. Bargain.

Andrew | 25.01.13 - 8:15 a.m. | #

restaurants not doing so well? maybe they need to appear on the London Restaurant Tube Map ...

http://cheesenbiscuits.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/london-restaurant-map-2012.html

geofftech | Homepage | 25.01.13 - 8:22 a.m. | #

If appearing on the London Restaurant Tube Map is the sole qualifier for success, then it would seem that the best strategy would be to move your establishment from a hotly contested area to a sparse one (e.g. near a small DLR station).

Darren S | 25.01.13 - 9:01 a.m. | #

Now I am hungry...

Greg | 25.01.13 - 10:20 a.m. | #

There are a couple on there that are *exactly the same* as their normal set menu.

Chz | 25.01.13 - 10:23 a.m. | #

I'm sat here wondering what to make for dinner and this isn't helping, as it's all to far away to dash out to!!

CornishCockney | 25.01.13 - 6:13 p.m. | #

I've sometimes wondered how waiters know that exact moment to ask if everything is fine is just at a moment of major eating.

rashbre | Homepage | 25.01.13 - 6:30 p.m. | #

I liked the bit about the waiter having a 'heavy European accent'.
I didn't know that Italians, French, Portuguese, Spaniards, Germans, Dutch, Czechs, Hungarians, Norwegians, Poles... sounded all the same to an English ear.

Pepe | 25.01.13 - 9:35 p.m. | #

Yo Pepe! What's the PC way of referring to foreigners serving you in a thick non-English accent then? Answers please?

Rover hive | 25.01.13 - 10:57 p.m. | #

Nothing to do with political correctness, as far as I'm concerned. I just found the use of the adjective 'European' as an umbrella term slightly comical. It's like saying that someone has 'an African accent', as if people from Morocco, Zimbabwe and Somalia spoke in the same way.
I would never presume to tell anybody what words to use or not to use, but I personally think the phrase 'a foreign accent' is the most clear and the least likely to cause misunderstanding.

Pepe | 26.01.13 - 9:44 a.m. | #

I wrote 'European' in this case, rather than 'Italian', because I was trying not to give too much away about the identity of the restaurant :)

diamond geezer | 26.01.13 - 10:56 a.m. | #

DG, I never thought you'd be unable to tell a French accent from a German one. Just found it funny that you said 'European' instead of 'foreign'. In the end you gave the game away, though, when you told us the waiter said 'Grazie' (we'd been suspecting it was an Italian restaurant all along, anyway).
Talking about eating places, Italian restaurants have always been, in my experience, the safest bet in London in terms of value for money.
Talking about waiters/waitresses, the gushing obsequiousness of staff in this place you describe must have been hard to bear, but it's always better, I think, than the sourfaced surliness you tend to find in New York City (though on second thoughts that could be due to the reputation we Europeans have of being bad tippers).

Pepe | 26.01.13 - 12:55 p.m. | #

Phew - sounds like a pretty good evening.
Went out last night with my partner, to a restaurant (nothing to do with the Evening Standard) just south of the river, that I'd seen and had wanted to visit for ages.
I'm mentioning it only because our bill included a 12.5% service charge, too.
The food was good but sadly the service wasn't. We did something we very rarely do: we took the charge off.

RogerW | 26.01.13 - 4:37 p.m. | #











TridentScan v2.10.0 | Privacy Policy