Delusions of grandeur?
I don't make a habit of reviewing the places where I eat as they are generally so good, but I felt I had to write something about a rare disappointing experience I had today at the imaginatively-named Nelson Street Restaurant in Nelson Street, Buckingham. This seems a popular venue with a good reputation so I was expecting great things from my first visit but it quite frankly left me underwhelmed. I went for lunch with a group of colleagues to celebrate a birthday, and the whole experience, while not unpleasant in any way, was just a bit too average compared with the many other fine places I have eaten at in the past.
There is not a great deal of choice on the lunch menu, a set menu with the option of three each of starter, main and dessert, and a dozen 'light lunch' items. The evening menu offers a bit more choice, but much less than the typical pub or family restaurant, and the prices are on the high side: all mains are well over £10 and at £7-8 some of the starters cost more than mains elsewhere. That would be excusable if the portions were large, but in my experience they are exactly the opposite so you don't get a lot for your money. We pre-ordered our meals and they were delivered in an acceptable timeframe, but others who have ordered while seated have criticised the service for being very slow, even at quiet times.
I can't normally eat a three-course meal at lunchtime but a main is usually sufficient so I chose the 'lunch cheeseburger' priced at £6.50. This turned out to be a small burger of a few inches in diameter, in a bun with a slice of cheese, a dribble of sauce, lettuce, tomato and gherkin, and nothing else: no sides were included but fortunately our organiser had ordered some extra side portions of chips, otherwise I would have been left very unsatisfied. While tasty enough, it was a very small meal for the price, and the burgers I have ordered elsewhere for similar money tend to be much bigger and come with large portions of chips and/or salad on the side. I think it is reasonable to assume a burger will come with a side of some sort, so to get just a burger in a bun by itself was a real disappointment - to make it look bigger and fill the plate it was rather bizarrely served with the top half of the bun separated from the lower part! A main course in an average restaurant, even a so-called 'light' option, is usually enough to fill me up, but I ended up eating someone else's leftover chips and still left the place feeling hungry, which very rarely happens.
The menu seems to change regularly and includes only the names of the dishes with no further detail: for example, one of the mains is 'different fish and chips' but there is no explanation of what is different about it, and readers are expected to know what these sometimes obscure dishes are. Another oddity on the menu is that the prices are shown in rounded form with no pound sign, such as 6.5 or 7 instead of £6.50 or £7.00; this may be a pointless attempt to be quirky for the sake of it but to me just looks unprofessional as it gives the impression they don't know how to use the currency formatting in their menu software, and is needlessly confusing as it isn't immediately apparent that these are the prices and not some other numbers.
As an alternative to the lunch cheeseburger, I could have had the Nelson Street burger from the set menu for £10.95, which did at least come with chips (albeit only a small pot of very salty French fries that reminded me of those served in McDonalds) but wasn't much bigger and didn't have anything else in the way of fillings, and would still have left me wanting more. I honestly don't feel it is worth so much money and I would have been happier with a basic unpretentious burger from the university refectory for half that price. I don't drink tea or coffee but one colleague was extremely disappointed with her coffee and sent it back, declaring it horrible.
While there was nothing unpleasant about our visit as the ambience was fine, the staff were attentive and the food tasted good enough, I'm afraid I felt that it was no more than average overall, lacked any special sparkle and didn't justify the high prices. There is so much competition among eating places that being average just isn't good enough and standards have to be first-class or customers will simply go elsewhere. My biggest gripe is that the portion sizes are very small and not enough to fill you up (and I'm by no means a greedy man), and leaving a restaurant still feeling hungry is not a good experience. It seems a bit too pretentious and is aspiring to be a high-class 'haute cuisine' restaurant but I didn't feel it really lived up to those claims. It was worth going for the experience, but I am reluctant to return and there are many better places in the locality where I would prefer to eat, so I'm afraid in my honest opinion I would not recommend Nelson Street Restaurant.
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