Lunch at The Glade at Sketch, Mayfair.

On Saturday I went for lunch at Sketch with a couple of friends. I had a £50 voucher that expires next week, and as I go to Paris on Thursday I thought we may as well use it! We had a bit of a kerfuffle at first, but eventually we got sorted and the lunch we had was really wonderful. The food was really tasty and the different rooms were awesome, not to mention the egg pod toilets! We ended up in The Glade, which is an enchanted forest themed restaurant.

So first I’ll explain what happened, as I really do feel their staff need to be taught customer service, as it was absolutely terrible. I called them up during the week to explain that we wanted to come for lunch on Saturday and I had a voucher, and I wanted to book a table in The Lecture Room (their Michelin starred restaurant). The woman on the phone told me ‘Oh no, we don’t take bookings on Saturday lunchtimes, just come along and we’ll get you seated’, so off we went on Saturday.
 
We got there and the receptionist led us into The Glade, so I told her that actually we’d like to go to The Lecture Room. She looked completely shocked and exclaimed with a pitiful smirk ‘But that’s our fine dining restaurant madam…’. I replied with ‘Yes…that’s where we would like to eat…’. Completely bemused she then told us that The Lecture Room was closed and that this was our only option. So I explained about the voucher and how it said on it that we could only use it in The Lecture Room or Gallery restaurant (the voucher didn’t mention what times you were allowed to visit or what days/times it was open, it just said ‘lunch or dinner’.
 
So we were moved to the Gallery, where we were presented with an Afternoon Tea menu (this was at 1pm). I asked if we could see the lunch menu as we didn’t want afternoon tea, and they said ‘oh no, we don’t do lunch on Saturdays’ WHO THE HELL DOESN’T DO LUNCH AT 1PM ON A SATURDAY!? I was fuming at this point – it had taken me 2 hours to get there and I was hangry. I was also fed up of being moved around and treated like an idiot who didn’t deserve to be in their restaurant.
 
So. They then led us back into The Glade and told us they would make exceptions this one time and let us use our voucher in there. We finally got our lunch after being moved between rooms, and I was so angry at the lady on reception who made it clear that we shouldn’t have been eating in their fine dining restaurant. Just because I’m young, does not mean I’m not good enough for your restaurant.
 
Anyway, onto the good part – the food! I had crusty baguettes to start with while the others had Quiche. My baguettes came in a Lego bowl, which I thought was amazing! So cool!

For mains A and I had the Beef Burger with Sketchup Sauce (their signature red cabbage ketchup), red cabbage and xeres jelly. C had the Vietnamese Pork Pho.

Despite the awful customer service, the food was good. After using the voucher it cost us around £20 each for the three of us (entire bill came to around £61 with the £50 off), which is very very good for three courses each plus drinks. But honestly, I probably wouldn’t pay full price here, the hassle and service just wasn’t good enough for that price. I’d much rather go somewhere like Kitchen W8 and pay the full price there, as everything was seamless and much more enjoyable.

Also I fixed my broken camera – yay!! There’s a water stain in the lens hence the photos look less clear and crisp than older ones, but at least it still works. I swooshed it in distilled water then left it in a bowl of rice to dry out!