The Colony

enjoyable evening at this very busy brasserie style restaurant. i would recommend the pressing of duck and chicken to start. whole seabass which my partner chose was very very impressive
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Sunday, July 27, 2008

great meal, has taken strides forward. salmon with pesto gnocci. mmm
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Thursday, July 17, 2008

i ate in there on a saturday night , the first time i have been back after a poor meal. i must say much much improved had a really pleasent meal and great night. new menu was really appealing. great.
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wesley sidebottom
Thursday, July 17, 2008

The Colony now has a new chef and is currently waiting for a new menu to be put on. The chef that has taken over has already improved the restaurent by miles so in time this restaurant will only get better. I have recently been and had a lovely meal, so I recommend this restaurant and especially to try the new menu which I've been told will be on sometime next month.
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Sunday, May 25, 2008

We went to The Colony for the first time last night as a pre-theatre outing.

Things started badly when we couldn't even get through the side doors and had to make our way to the front entrance and in via the hotel lobby. I wish we had taken the hint!

First off we discovered the small print on the menu that revealed that the £15.95 two course offer only applied to three of the mains and a couple of starters, hmm...

Then the wine list arrived. Now I'm used to restaurant mark ups and I understand that but a number of the wines were those I know well from the supermarkets and we were looking at a three fold markup - a glass for the price of a bottle!! I did something I have never done before and ordered a glass of tap water.

So what about the food, would it make up for all the other failings?

Well my starter was a chicken liver parfait with brioche and fig chutney. The parfait was over chilled, under seasoned and to be honest didn't even rate as average. The chutney was odd, nice enough flavour but served as a whole fig and needed chopped up to eat. This had the added downside of then ending up with large pieces of fig which overpowered the parfait.

For main I had seared cod with spicy beans and pancetta. The beans were slightly curried the latter having a rather raw taste. The cod was just badly cooked. The skin was as soft as when it came out of the sea rather than seared and overall it was a little undercooked. I suspect the fish was too cold and the pan not hot enough. So not great flavour and very poor technique, not what I'm really looking for in somewhere at this price point.

Oh and then we had to go looking for someone to pay as we had to get to the Halle... although they did still add the 10% service charge - maybe that was for the effort they put in to changing the dirty cutlery?

I can think of at least a dozen restaurants within 5 minutes of here all of which are better, not sure I can really think of any worse.
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GC
Wednesday, February 06, 2008

Horrible, tastless, overcooked food. The service was terrible. Don't go.
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Lottie Reay
Sunday, February 11, 2007

I visited this restaruant when it was Nico Central and had a fabulous meal, so decided to return after the refurbishment. What a mistake.

We were squeezed into a table between 2 other couples despite the restaurant being almost empty. The decor was naff and dull.

The food was tastless, overcooked and cold. The service was appauling, we waited 15 minutes to get a menu. My partner was given the wrong starter.

The waitress walked around the restaurant disinfecting the tables which further spoilt the mood.

I could not wait to leave this horrible, overpriced restaurant.
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Lottie Reay
Sunday, February 11, 2007