Pitcher & Piano

10 Pollen Street
Mayfair
London
W1S !NQ

+44 (0) 207 629 9581/9582

It’s Friday morning and you are feeling hungry, not to mention perhaps a touch shaky from the night before, so when the phrase ‘pub lunch’ is mentioned you think Hallelujah! So off down to the Pitcher and Piano on Pollen Street we went, and between us ordered quite a selection.

Let’s start with the 2 dishes off their ‘express £5’ menu (there was absolutely nothing express about it by the way!) which were a fettuccini dish and a chorizo and bean cassoulet. The fettuccini was basically a pile of pasta, with a sprinkling of olives and capers. Nothing else to say really. The chorizo and butter bean cassoulet with a side of crusty bread was more butter beans than I have ever seen in my life with a couple of slices of chorizo, some funny orangey sauce with a bit of chilli powder or something in an attempt to add depth and make the dish interesting. It didn’t. There was none of the rich tomato sauce you usually get in this type of dish, and absolutely none of the added vegetables, just hundreds upon hundreds of butterbeans. It looked like the kind of thing that the Hollyoaks props department would use as fake vomit. Oh and the ‘side of crusty bread’? cold white toast.

But maybe you get what you pay for…. Everything else on the menu was around the £8 mark… 8oz burgers for instance, were they any better? By all accounts no. Too small and very over done was the general consensus. The tomato soup? Mediocre (seriously, how hard is it to get tomato soup right?). The beef and ale pie? Should be renamed carrots and a beef oxo cube. The only thing that wasn’t complained about was the pizza.

And with drinks coming in at £4.75 for a glass of red, and £4 for a cider it really, really isn’t worth it. Pub Lunches on a Friday are precious, for the love of God do not waste them here. 

Comments

[Neil]

Sounds familiar....i've had a very similar experience whilst in the Pitcher & Piano down off St Martin's Lane in The Strand. They came and took our drink and food orders after about 10 minutes, which wasn't the problem. It was getting the drinks orders wrong and taking 50 minutes to bring the food out, even then they didn't get it all right and had missed one order off completely! I didn't opt for the express menu, instead i went for a steak baguette. The baguette the steak came in was really hard....like teeth breakingly hard and as the steak was nothing to cheer about, there is little left to reccommend.....i guess the beer was pretty cold, which is always nice.