Richard I.
Yelp
Writing this to balance the karma of a dreadful review I had to give The French Bookshop nearby.
Since I'm the first to review, I wonder if this is a new opening? I haven't seen it before, though, that said, I don't hang around South Kensington an awful lot.
Firstly, always judge a restaurant by its management. I turned up with a partner at 7pm and it was full of people too old for fancy dress wearing ghoul costumes for Halloween. And I mean full. It was early but there were no tables and four people ahead of us. But we were efficiently told we would have a 10 minute wait and put on a list, in case we decided to saunter off and return I guess. There is nowhere to wait in the restaurant (no bar).
The premises are small and we were shown (within 10 minutes - good work) to a small table in the middle of a busy section. Now normally this is the first way to wind me up - waiters and customers knock into you (even more so when they're drunk), you're constantly shifting your position to allow people past, and so on. I didn't notice any of this. A good sign.
Service came quickly, was friendly and confident, and the food was with us within 10 minutes despite the crowds - and was of a very high standard. The menu is quite limited and fits on to one A4 page with little difficulty. To me, this indicates they do few things, but they do them well, and that counts for more than a 100 mediocre dishes.
Had to visit the toilet - there was only one in action, for some reason, and this was the disabled version. Again, worth noting that while it obviously hadn't been attended to by staff for a bit as someone had (presumably drunkenly) had fun with the toilet paper, it was clean and there was soap in the dispenser. This is never less than reassuring - it indicates an interest in hygiene in the premises.
It was noisy due to the crowds but not, I think, due to any music - I certainly wasn't aware of any which is enough to say that it didn't bother me if there was - I do hate loud music when I'm eating.
All in all, if you're in the market for a well made, tasty burger, served by genuinely pleasant staff, come here. It's very good. My companion had an ice-cream dessert and that looked pretty amazing too.