After 6pm it’s amazing anyone comes here. Located at the very top of the National Portrait Gallery, it is impossible to find the entrance in the dark once the gallery shuts and the prices jump from reasonable for great food, to expensive for indifferent food: Quite an achievement for this Richard Corrigan restaurant.

Our previous visit here meant we were all very excited to try the food again: we had come previously for an early evening dinner, scraping in just in time for the set menu, which was excellent. Spoiler Alert: The à la carte serves the worst of the set menu at an outrageous markup.

Nothing seemed to go quite right. Our table wasn’t ready. We arrived for 6.45 and ended up being seated at 7.15, although that allowed my poor parents time to talk the entire circuit of the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square trying to find the entrance (it is tucked round the back in Orange Street when the NPG is shut). We did get a free round of cocktails as a result, and the manager could not have been more helpful and apologetic.

The food ranged from average (the Jerusalem artichoke) to pretty good (the steak), but we were definitely in the way turning up after the set dinner crowd had left. Service was actually a little snarky, and when we were the last people left (at 8.30, long before the official close and only because we were seated so late), there was much banging and shouting from the open kitchen.

This was our family Xmas meal, and was far from cheap (the steak with no sides cost more than the 3 course set menu), and frankly, we could have done far better for the price anywhere else in London.

Portrait is a great restaurant – the set menu is good value and the lamb belly which seems to be a prix fixe fixture is outstanding. And it has one of the best restaurant views in London, overlooking Trafalgar Square. But I was really disappointed by this visit: paying top whack is fair enough if the food and service lives up to it (or even just the food in the case of Holy Carrot), but this promised much, but the picture it paints is not pretty.

Conclusion

Rating: 3.5/5

Portrait: https://theportraitrestaurant.com