Petersham Nurseries Restaurant, Richmond

We had brunch at Petersham Nurseries. The setting is unique and beautiful especially after a walk along the river. However overall I have to say it was disappointing. For a start the coffee is not great considering the wide availability of great coffee in many places theses days I find it hard to understand why they would not put more effort into this. I had the Shakshuka, when it arrived the eggs were hard and the dish had to be returned. The sauce was bland and watery. My husband had the English breakfast, the sausages and bacon were good quality and the added greens were also tasty. We didn’t bother with more coffee or cake. The service was good it’s just a shame the overall quality was poor.

As with some other recent reviewers, our experience was marred by very long wait times between courses. We waited around 35-40 minutes between our starters and mains, with no explanation or apology from the wait staff. The food was decent but the portions were remarkably small, especially for the starters. Overall, it was a pleasant setting with some nice tasting food, but if you are able to spend c.£150pp for a 3-course lunch there are some much better options available locally. Hopefully they can upgrade whatever’s going on in the kitchen sometime soon, as the venue has real potential but isn’t quite up to scratch for the price point yet.

Service and atmosphere are great, unfortunately… for a £190 check (without alcohol), I would expect something a little bit wow. Previously, for the last couple of years each time I looked for a table, it is always full. Somehow I thought I was lucky to finally able to get a table for my birthday lunch. Starter was amazing, I had tartare and my husband had burrata - though nothing is really spectacular about the burrata but 5 stars for the tartare. Main? If we want to give an honest opinion, the steak was tough, my sourdough for the stew came burnt, I did asked the waiter if it’s possible to change but the 2nd bread came cold and hard. Desserts were tasting okay but again, lacking a wow factor for that range of price. Would we come back for the food? No. I should’ve read the reviews but was already filled up with all this ideas I’ve built in my mind about the restaurant reputation for the last couple of years. Now that I read the reviews here about the food quality and that assurance comments will be shared with the team from months ago and the latest was last week, but I am still facing similar concerns today so I guess the comments were never really taken seriously. Alas yes, this is disappointing. The only good thing that come up from this is that I’ll get two birthday lunches