Rate My Bistro » finchley road

Fine Burger Co. – O2 Centre, Finchley Road

Dina — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 07:50:32 +0000

Sometimes all you need is the classic burger and chips, and who better to share such an evening with, than with the family! Fine Burger Co is decorated with bright orange and white and light spheres hanging from the ceiling. The dining area feels quite spacious and clean. The seating is plastic chairs and wooden tables. There is cushioned seating along one of the walls. In addition, there are also some tables on the outside of the restaurant.

Fine Burger Co has some tables with a computer screen displaying various offers. You can place your order from these screens. A little fore warning about the offers displayed though. On the night that we were there, there was an offer on the dessert. When we enquired about this particular offer, the waitress told us that they knew nothing about the offer and hence they could not offer it.

A couple of starter dishes were chosen. These were the chicken strips and the fried baby squid. The chicken strips were great! The chicken was tender and not greasy. The baby squid on the other hand was slightly disappointing. The squid was extremely chewy. Both starters came with dips.

As I fancied something on the smaller side, I chose the kids meal. This consisted of a burger, fries, salad and ice cream. The kids chicken burger had three very small strips of chargrilled chicken breast. The chicken only filled half of the bread roll. Even though it was a smaller burger, there should have been more filling in it. The bread roll was soft and fresh.

The salad that came with the meal was cucumber strips, tomato and carrot sticks. All of the vegetables were stale and dried out. The salad was left untouched.

The meal was supposed to come with skinny fries but I asked if this could be changed to the hand cut chips. At first, the waitress wasn’t sure if this was possible. After asking her supervisor, they said that they could do this! The hand cut chips were more like potato wedges with nice crispy skins.

The dessert was a scoop of strawberry ice cream. The ice cream was nice enough.

The staff were friendly and gave good service. One of the issues that we had though was that the offers displayed should have been honoured.

Fine Burger Co also serves a good range of milkshakes. These were tempting and if I had the room for it, I would have definitely have tried one!

Fine Burger Co, 1st Floor, O2 Centre, 255 Finchley Road, London, NW3 6LU

Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars

Thai Pepper – Swiss Cottage

Dina — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 16:53:41 +0000

This is a cute Thai restaurant, which when you enter looks really small. We thought that it only had the four or so tables/booths. So we were surprised when we asked for a table, we were taken downstairs. I just assumed that the downstairs area would be the whole of the kitchen! On the lower level, Thai Pepper opens out into its main restaurant area with lots more seating.

The food seemed fresh as it took them a little time to make it. The vegetarian dumplings were really tasty and you got six of them, so enough to share! Even though it said on the menu that they were steamed, they had crispy edges, so I’m not sure if they had been fried a little. Either way, they were good and they went well with the fried garlic and soya sauce.

It was a tough choice to decide whether to go for the Thai green curry with rice or the Pad Thai! Finally, I decided to go for the vegetarian Pad Thai noodles! Great fried rice noodles with carrots, bamboo shoots, baby corn, egg and crushed peanuts. This dish was just a bit too saucy towards the end of the dish. If I had to change anything about the Pad Thai is that I would make it a little less sweet and also I would add some tofu to it.

Thai Pepper is a small intimate restaurant with lovely friendly staff. One thing to note is that Thai Pepper is only open during the evenings and not in the day time.

Thai Pepper, 115 Finchley Road, Swiss Cottage, London, NW3 6HY

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

Zizzi – O2 Centre, Finchley Road

Dina — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 10:53:21 +0000

If you want some good Italian food, then you can never fail with Zizzi! It’s even better now that they have added some new items to their menu. One of the new additions is the pizzettes. These are three mini pizzas with the following toppings: tomato and pesto, cheese and caramelised onions, peppers and goat’s cheese. The pizzettes are definitely a winner of a starter!

The main dishes were also very flavoursome. The risotto verde was quite a big portion. It had a light fresh taste to it, mainly because of the fresh green vegetables. The risotto had lots of broad beans and large slices of courgettes. It didn’t really have much spinach or green beans.

The penne alla casa was a baked pasta dish with chicken, pancetta, spinach in a mushroom sauce. We were surprised at how oily and greasy this dish was; something that we would not have expected when referring to pasta. It still had a good taste to it though.

We went for the full three courses and had dessert to complete our meal. The sorbetti was specified on the menu as being two scoops of sorbet. It was nice that the waiter let me have one scoop of ice cream and one of sorbet. The flavours were all good!!! We had refreshing mango sorbet, creamy strawberry ice cream and my friend had the blackcurrant sorbet. She said that the blackcurrant one was quite sharp.

The biggest problem that we had this particular Zizzi was that the service was extremely slow. All in all, we were there for hours and that was due to us waiting so long for the attention of the staff and for our food to be served. It was not like the restaurant was that busy or that they were understaffed. It was a good job that we had the starter right at the beginning of the meal, otherwise we would have been totally starving by the time the rest of our food would have come.

Zizzi, O2 Centre, 255 Finchley Road, London, NW3 6LU

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars