Seymour's Restaurant & Bar

Our evening at Seymour's yielded mixed results. We received a very warm welcome and good service. The ambience was quiet and relaxed. The dining room is fairly small, decorated with richly coloured, period furnishings, paintings and photographs, appropriate to a Georgian town house. It is part of the Leonard Hotel which has over fifty rooms in the rest of the property. The restaurant seems to base its reputation on its popular Afternoon Tea and we were told that relatively few customers take dinner there. It seems that over half the regular residents and diners are of Arab origin (indeed, part of the menu was in Arabic with a number of Middle Eastern dishes) and many reside close-by in the vicinity of Edgware Road. On the night in question, we were the only diners until another couple arrived an hour later. The dinner menu choice is limited and traditional. My soup and main (fish) course was quite tasty, as was the generous portion of well-prepared chips. My companion found that her fish & chips were largely batter and very unexciting, although - again- the chips were very good. When asked for tartar sauce, the waiter said they did not serve it! We both had scoops of ice cream for dessert: this was quite enjoyable in itself but came without any garnishing or even wafer biscuits. Perhaps Seymour's serves a really good afternoon tea, but their dinners seem to be rather lacking - probably because they are not in demand and there is no incentive to improve the presentation, quality or variety of what is on offer. That is a pity, because the ground floor dining area is attractive, cozy and inviting.