I am in two minds about this Teddington restaurant. I’ve been there when it is a busy lunchtime cafe, and like this week, when it is a slightly more sophisticated evening eatery. I have to confess a small prejudice, which is that its extremely dog-friendly policy is tough for those of us who start to wheeze when they hear barking, but I dosed up on anti-histamine so that I could do a proper review…

It has a great atmosphere. When you walk in, the lighting is subdued, and the whole place feels welcoming. Sadly, candles have been replaced with portable lamps which have the brightness turned up to 11, but if you have a spare table next to you as we did, the glow from a metre or so away adds nicely to the visibility of the meal.

a focus on service

Service was a real game of two halves. One of our servers was excellent. Attentive and friendly. The other genuinely could not care. Possibly her last night, who knows.

It took a while to get a drink ordered. I reckon they could easily have got one more drink out of us each over the course of the evening had we been served in the first 10 minutes or so, but (see above), service was not at a premium.

We ordered the Folc English Rose, which was an absolute bargain at £8.90 for a 175ml glass, given that a bottle retails at £22 from the producer. It turned up warm. Probably the result of a hot glass straight from the dishwasher meeting a less than cold bottle of wine, but a pretty amateur mistake. This all took time to rectify, and there was little in the way of apology.

The menu is Dukkah heavy, which is no bad thing, but the sharing Dukkah carrots were hard and tasteless, apart from the Dukkah. They could have done with a lot more actual seasoning (some salt maybe), and cooking.

However, the Yemeni pancake, another big Dukkah consumer was fresh and tasty, and the Miso Salmon was excellent: perfectly seasoned, so this was not one of those restaurants who refuse to put salt in anything.

We did manage to get a second glass of wine, but it turned up well after we ordered it (even prompting the waitress who just said “well, I put the order through), which is annoying when you want something to have with the meal. I did enjoy my glass of Appassimento, though.

All told, it was a reasonable meal for the price, but it would not take much to make this a 5 star eatery. It was not full, which many other local restaurants were. There was also an unbelievably loud table of people, who were visibly disturbing a number of other guests, who being very English, said nothing. It is incumbent on the restaurant to try to allow everyone to have a great time, without it spilling over into raucousness.

Rating: 4/5

Cafe Benedict: https://www.cafebenedict.co.uk/