Matthew Smith's Qype profile

The High Road Brasserie is a bit of a local institution. Whilst the food might be rather expensive, you are getting silver service, and a beautiful setting. Sit indoors and admire the art deco interior or under the awning on the pavement outside to watch the world go by. (Outside can similarly be a little hectic as it overlooks the High Road…)

It is the kind of place you can pick up a very good Eggs Benedict and Champagne cocktail brunch, or sit with the newspaper and a coffee for an hour.

Personally I wouldn’t come here for a full on dinner, as it is very pricey and there are other local restaurants which I prefer. But it is great for a posh brunch.

This restaurant is only a few doors away from another Thai restaurant called Budsara.

Whilst this restaurant looks a lot more classy than the other one, I found the prices slightly higher, the service slightly more austere, and the food frankly not as tasty.

I will certainly give this restaurant another try, but I think my preference is Budsara.

This pub is a real gem, a local favourite amongst residents of Chiswick. The selection of ales and stouts on tap is good, the service is superb, the food is absolutely mouth watering, and the ambience is lovely.

I cannot recommend this pub restaurant highly enough and it is a real asset to the local area.

I had a problem with the seating here too! We did not book, however the restaurant looked completely empty, so we asked for a table. There were many seats near the front of the restaurant, where it was light and pleasant. Alternatively there were seats outside which would have been lovely. I did ask for a table somewhere near the front or outside, but we were instead shoved to a back table in a pokey corner with no light. For no reason! Why?!

Despite this, I found the food to be pretty decent. Nothing groundbreaking, but I do like fresh Vietnamese noodles and clear spring rolls so much that I soon forgot about the very strangely Fascist seating policy to which we had fallen foul.

I have used this pizza joint quite a few times, and I have to say I didn’t find it as bad as the other reviewers. I am quite a critical pizza lover!

There is one thing you should know, however:

If you want takeout pizza, take a walk five minutes down the road into Chiswick, and grab one from Franco Manca, which does takeout. The pizza in Franco Manca isn’t merely superior, it is positively five star because they use fabulous ingredients and have well-trained pizzaioli, and a damned good pizza oven. Not to mention the sourdough which is baked in store.

With the aforementioned restaurant, you will benefit from economies of scale; it is always busy, and your pizza costs around £2 cheaper. More to the point it is far better.

Does not exist any more!

This restaurant is about 20 steps from my front door, and I love to support local business, however unfortunately the first time I visited, the restaurant was empty, the waiter ignored us, then proceeded to pick a fight with a group of youths outside. I say “fight”, I don’t mean a brawl as such, but he was being antagonistic with a group of youths, one of whom had lost a set of keys that the waiter had picked up and refused to give back to them unless they offered a reward.

The waiter then came over to our table to explain, but only came off as racist and rude.

We didn’t exactly gorge ourselves on food but the bill for two of us came to over £70 (one glass of wine and a soft drink between us).

Admittedly the main dish I had was very good, but I feel nothing excuses the behaviour of this waiter, not to mention the disproportionately high price of the meal.

I once purchased a paper trimmer / guillotine from here. I was asking for a known brand but they didn’t have any. The chap assured me the one they had was the best brand of trimmers you could buy, far better than any of the brands I had heard of. He assured me that everyone used the particular brand that he sold me.

Sure enough the trimmer pretty much fell apart within a week.

Also, after purchasing this item along with quite a few others in one trip, I got home to find my receipt had no detail on it whatsoever. Just a tiny slip with the total price on, and didn’t even have the business name which meant I was unable to claim back my VAT.

Disappointed, because the shop seems really decent and they have good stock apart from those points.