Rik L.

Review of Selfridges

13 Dec 07, 12:00

Badly laid out

Out of all the department stores on Oxford Street, this is the worst one for getting around. All the passages are narrow, it's hard to browse without a queue of people trying to get past. Even on a weekday morning, you still have to trudge around slowly because there's too many people trying to get to the same place at the same time.

The products here are nice, but the prices are marked up so high, it's not worth spending the money. You can go down Oxford Street and get the same thing for cheaper.

I always find it a disappointment leaving Selfridges. I always go in thinking I'll be leaving with lots of bags full of stuff, but I inevitably come out leaving with nothing.

3 out of 3 people found this review helpful.

Review of Rasa W1

13 Dec 07, 11:51

Cold food

After some hard morning shopping on Oxford Street, I decided to go to Rasa W1 mainly because I'd been to their other restaurants and I'd heard they did a mean lunch box.

I walked into the restaurant and three of the waiters were just staring at me. Not the friendliest of welcomes, eventually I got a lunch box and asked if I could sit down to eat it. The waiters again looked at me strangely and started talking to each other in Hindi. Eventually they checked if it was okay and I sat down. It was a bit odd to check if I could sit in an empty restaurant on my own, especially as they cleared me out of the way by putting me upstairs.

I got to my lunch box and it was pretty cold. I knew it wasn't meant to be cold, mainly because it was slightly lukewarm, and even the rice was cold. Not great, I thought. So I managed to eat it and left.

The lunch box would have been nice if it was hot, as Rasa usually do really good food. Plus the lunch box was only £3 so it was a bit of a bargain. Even so, it's not good to serve cold food and then have the waiters check if I can sit down.

I would recommend Rasa, just make sure you go in the evening!

1 out of 1 person found this review helpful.

Review of The Slug And Lettuce

17 Jul 07, 17:05

Posh Wetherspoons

I was with some of the reviewers below when the staff were (more than) a bit rubbish, but I have been here before, so I'll summarize my visits. The Slug and Lettuce is a wine bar chain, like a city-banker version of Wetherspoons. It's rather large with good, if not a bit bland, decoration.

As with Wetherspoons, Slug and Lettuce pubs have no hint of character whatsoever, you almost know what the interior is going to look like even before stepping into the place. Good if you're a city banker, bad if you're someone who likes a bit of originality.

Drinks here are definitely on the expensive side, pints can easily cost £4, a glass of wine can cost £6. They're no different than any other pub either. You get to pay extra - some might say over the odds - to sit in a chain pub.

The food here is quite nice and surprisingly it's not as price-inflated as the drinks. It is pretty standard quality though, no gourmet food here. You'd never take a date for a meal here, it's more generic pub grub and there's plenty of pubs in the area that do a much better job of pub food. As said with the other reviews, the staff aren't the brightest bunch in the world, but I won't go too much into that.

There's a lot of bars and pubs in Farringdon, and a high percentage are good places to go. The Slug and Lettuce isn't a bad pub, per se, but it's definitely not a good pub.

0 out of 0 people found this review helpful.

Review of Waterstones

15 Jul 07, 23:30

No long tail

Apparently this is the biggest bookshop in Europe, and with 7 large floors, you can see why. It covers subject you could possibly think of, from modern art to sports. The main problem that I had with Waterstones is that even though they do every subject imaginable, the range within the subject is not particularly wide. For instance, their computer book section is only about ten bookcases big, compared to Foyles's same section which is about a quarter of a floor. If you're looking for something even slightly specialist, then you probably won't find it here.

The store is laid out pretty well, it's very nice to just leisurely browse around and you can easily go and get a coffee from Costa in the basement. However, if you compare this place to Foyle's, which is smaller, you have to wonder where all the good books went.

0 out of 0 people found this review helpful.

Review of Urban Outfitters

25 Jun 07, 21:45

Expensive

Sometimes I wonder why people shop here. It's pretty expensive for what it is - fake-vintage t-shirts for 30 quid, jeans that cost over £100 that aren't as great as the price tag suggests, trendy CDs with excessive mark-up. Being in Covent Garden, you can get everything at Urban Outfitters at a cheaper price in shops very nearby.

The quality of items at Urban Outfitters does tend to be pretty high, I've got things that have lasted ages, so you do generally get what you pay for.

However, the range of products at this store is always pretty small, so it's pretty hard to find something nice. There are other Urban Outfitters around central London which are larger so have better ranges. If you can't find much in this place, either go to another Urban Outfitters or there are enough shops around Covent Garden to find exactly what you're looking for.

3 out of 3 people found this review helpful.

Review of Bershka

14 Jun 07, 21:13

Not great, worth a try now and again

Being a guy, I'll talk about the men's section of this shop, as I don't know much about women's fashion. This shop is basically a European version of Topshop - aimed at trendy young people who don't want to fork out lots of money for the latest must-haves.

The men's section is rather small, and it's laid out in such a spread out way that the range looks even less. Compared with the larger Topman across the road, you wonder why you don't just go there instead.

Being a European shop, the fashions tend to be different to the current British fashions too. There's quite a lot of stuff that isn't even fashionable over here, but that's not to say there isn't good clothes here. You just need to search through the rubbish, as you do at Topman too, but there are times when you can leave the shop without even considering to buy anything.

The clothes are good quality though when you do find something worth buying, and they are definitely on the inexpensive side, which is a bonus. If you persevere, you will find something nice... eventually!

0 out of 0 people found this review helpful.

Review of Vue

23 May 07, 18:44

Expensive

Ryan E's review says that Vue is 'relatively okay priced'... I don't know which Vue in Angel he'd gone to but this Vue is the most expensive cinema I've been to.

Not only are the tickets stupidly expensive, but so are the snack bars. You can easily spend up to £15 each for a film, which in my opinion is expensive for someone to press play on a video and for someone to hand me some popcorn. It's nicer to go to Leicester Square and make a proper night of it and still pay the same price as you do here.

There's nothing particularly wrong with Vue, it's a fairly standard cinema, with nice seats and good views, but the price is so expensive that it feels that you should be getting more for the money.

1 out of 1 person found this review helpful.

Review of The Sequel

23 May 07, 13:56

Cheap and cheesy

I have a mate who swears by this place - he found it by wondering around the streets of Angel looking for a place to eat after only a day in London, but he keeps going back and back to this place. He can't get enough of it. He sometimes comes from Fulham just to visit.

When I finally joined on one of his expeditions, I coudn't see what the fuss was about. The food, mainly Italian-based, was very average. I think I could cook better food without trying. The ingredients didn't seem to be of particularly high quality either, but then it is pretty cheap anyway.

If you're a fan of cabaret, then you'll probably like this place, but, if, like me, you think cabaret is a bit cheesy and cheap, then you won't really like the entertainment they put on.

I can see why this place is popular, if you like cheap pasta and cheap entertainment, then you'll love it. If you're not as keen on either of those, then you'll probably not enjoy it.

3 out of 3 people found this review helpful.

Review of Gulsham Tandoori

20 May 07, 11:24

Go somewhere else

I got told this place was quite nice, how wrong they were. If you like your food served by waiters who snatch menus from you, serve food with dirty hands or are just generally unpleasant, then this is the place for you. It's almost like they don't want your return custom.

To be fair to them, the food is pretty cheap and it's generally nice, in a tastes-like-a-microwaved-curry kind of way, which is why it's escaped from a one star review, but it was very close run thing. If you want a nice curry, there's plenty of places near by which are miles better.

0 out of 0 people found this review helpful.

Review of Sadlers Wells Barber Shop

14 May 07, 14:34

Sheep

Imagine you're a sheep wanting a hair cut... you don't know where to go so you look on welovelocal for a baaa-rbers (lolz), what would be the first result? Yep, this place. They would sit you down, put a cape around your woolly neck, get out the clippers and lob off your fuzzy sheep hair.

You only wanted your fluffy wool trimmed, you wanted to maintain your cool style to impress the sexy ewes, but now, it's all gone on to the floor on the barber shop, and you leave cold, naked and disappointed.

0 out of 1 person found this review helpful.

Review of Hamburger Union

11 May 07, 13:53

If you want a burger, go to Maccy D's

You can polish a turd, but it's still a turd. Should be Hamburger Union's motto, really. That's not to say their hamburgers are like eating turds. They're actually quite nice. Only quite nice though. No, what I mean is that you can make a hamburger place look a million dollars, but it's still always going to be a hamburger place. That's not to say Hamburger Union looks a million dollars either. It's merely a more middle-class family's version of McDonalds. With it's free range ingredients, and posh wines, you wonder if you are in a burger bar at all. But then they bring you the burgers and reality strikes. If you really really want a burger, then I would advise a trip to McDonalds. Yes, Maccy D's (as it's known on da streetz) isn't the most eco-friendly, or most hygienic, but it does make better, tastier burgers for half the price of Hamburger Union. If you don't want a McDonalds, then at least go to a proper restaurants. It's not as if there aren't loads around Soho.

1 out of 1 person found this review helpful.

Review of Wagamama

10 May 07, 11:08

Awful service

I am a fan of Wagamama's food - they do very nice Japanese noodles - and the Islington branch is my local branch, which I tend to go quite a lot. So why am I giving it two stars? The service there is, on a very good day, of an average standard, on a normal day, mediocre, and on a bad day, absolutely abysmal. You can wait ages to be served. Ages to get a bill. Wrong meals. Wrong drinks. Overcrowding. Forgotten orders. Lukewarm meals. It's as if the staff are playing some kind of Beadle's About stunt, but the sad thing is that they're not. And yet, I still go, and each time I come out slightly more disappointed. They would have received a single star normally, but the food pumps them up one.

0 out of 0 people found this review helpful.

Review of All Bar One

09 May 07, 16:51

Nice, but lacks character

On Wikipedia, it says that the All Bar One chain is "criticised for its lack of character, with each bar looking almost identical and its cynical owners buying up charming pubs and converting them into a city slickers' hell hole". You can definitely see what they mean by this, but All Bar One is quite a nice place with nice drinks. But that's all it is. Nice. Nothing really outstanding or memorable about it. You couldn't say anything about it that's remotely interesting. The decor is pretty if not a bit Ikea-lite. The drinks are good, if not a bit dear. The staff are nice, if not a bit lazy and slow. The people who go there are friendly, if not a bit dull. It's good for a quick stop off, but if you do forget it next morning, don't blame the beer, blame the lack of character the place has.

0 out of 0 people found this review helpful.

Review of Hoxton Apprentice

05 May 07, 23:28

Second time disappointing

The first time I came here was about a year ago, and it was one of the best meals I've had in London. Would have been a five star review. However, second time I visited, for my birthday, it was a disappointment.

The menu had completely changed from the first time and had gone decidedly downmarket (e.g. from prime beef to steak and chips). My steak was so tough that I couldn't physically cut through half of it and being a posh restaurant, the portions are small, meaning that you're still hungry when you leave. Not a satisfying birthday meal...

Apart from the food, everything is great. The place is nice, the wine is really good and the waiters are pleasant. I just really hope that they change their menu back to what it was, as it was so much better.

0 out of 0 people found this review helpful.

Review of Magma

04 May 07, 15:37

Too small and too busy

I love Magma, it's a great place to find books and magazines on art and design. There's 3 Magma shops, two being in London (the other in Manchester) and this place is where it all began. Despite the great range of books, the problem is the shop itself. It's far too small and is always packed full (usually with Nathan Barley types, like myself). I may be far too used to bookshops with some room to actually look at the books, but now I always end up either staying two uncomfortable minutes in the shop or looking in the front door and deciding not to bother. I would recommend the Clerkenwell shop though, it's a lot more roomy and quiet, or if you are ever in the north, the Manchester shop is far better than the London shops.

0 out of 0 people found this review helpful.