Visconti

A restricted menu choice for main course: in principle, nothing wrong with that. I chose the lamb and my partner chose the salmon. It turned out there was no lamb available: the only other meat alternative was beef which I don't like. No chicken , no pork no game, no vegetarian choice. I chose 2 servings of the 1st course scallops instead. We waited quite some time for our food to arrive. Likewise, the wine, which clearly they had forgotten about. My partner's salmon was apparently OK. My 6 scallops, while basically delicious, had no roe and were served with a sauce that was so salty my lips began to hurt. The spinach ordered by my partner and broccoli for me were missing and had to be requested. Our vegetables were eventually served a good 10-15 minutes after our main courses. The broccoli was even saltier than the scallop sauce but I ate it - it was good quality and crisply cooked. The spinach tasted oddly of fish and my partner ate none of it. We initially chose ice cream as dessert but since there was only lemon sorbet, and yoghourt or hazelnut ice cream available we decided to have the panna cotta with fruit: it was quite the best part of the meal. Clearly this has been a popular and good restaurant in the past but on a Friday night on a Bank Holiday weekend it was virtually empty; but one can understand why. Nobody asked whether we enjoyed our meal. We did not. This was obvious to the staff and the cost of the wine was deducted from the bill.