THE NINTH
Well what can we say about celebrity chef Jun Tanaka's, American born British- Japanese, presenter of Channel 4 Cook It programme, best known for his ponytail hair! To sum it up in a few words Fantastic food, Appalling service!!!
Situated in the West Ends Charlotte Street, which holds the most Michelin Star restaurants in one street, which includes Kitchen Table, Pied a Terre and probably soon to have a Michelin Star for Monica Galetti's - Mere. Jun Tanaka's restaurant The Ninth is very casual with brick walls and wooden tables with no table cloths. But it is refreshingly relaxed.
As we are a group of separate diners we asked for separate bills at the beginning of the evening, which they were happy to oblige. We do find now that most restaurants are willing to do this, even local gastro pubs do. But sadly when it came to the end of the meal and paying the bill, they had completely forgotten to do this! They did offer that if we told them what each dinner had ordered, then they would work it out, but by the time we had gone to all that trouble it was just easier for us to add up the amounts!
Now this wouldn't have been so bad if they also hadn't have forgotten to bring one of our main courses too !!!!! And this is where it became unacceptable service for any restaurant, let alone a Michelin star restaurant! !! All our guests received their main courses at the same time except for one guests dinner. When we asked where it was the waiters actually had the audacity to tell us that the Turbot fish took longer to cook than all the rest!!! And considering I had the Lamb Wellington, we found it very strange that the fish would take longer to cook than the lamb !!! We are adults - just tell us that you forgot it !!! Anyway when we were all at least 3/4 of the way through our mains, and after we had to enquire 4 times where the turbot was, it finally turned up! The waiters should have been coming over to us to apologise and reassure us, rather than us having to call them constantly to find out how much longer it was going to take! And at the end of the day we weren't even offered a free dessert or anything. Just very poor service, and service really can make or break an evening.
So to sum it up my Lamb Wellington was cooked to perfection and my other guests were pleased with their dishes. However we won't elaborate on the dishes purely because of the lack of good service.
So sadly we will only give this restaurant a 6/10
The Ninth
22 Charlotte Street,
Fitzrovia,
London
W1T 2NB
Phone: 020 3019 0880
Web: theninthlondon.com