Restaurant Story, London Bridge, London, UK

Restaurant Story is a Michelin Starred restaurant and has proudly been so, since 2013.

The chef and patron behind the restaurant is Tom Sellers, hence the menu has been influenced by his culinary career and the history of British food.

According to their website: "At Story the premise is simple; we seek to tell our story through the food we serve.", which is why the diner is given a fixed menu based on Chapters of a storybook.

"If you are longing for a visit to the Fat Duck but don't want to make the trek, Story is the next best thing"

- Zagat, Hottest restaurant in the world - Where to eat now, 2014

Location:

My friends made a booking for three at Restaurant Story one Monday evening at 6.30pm approximately one week before the actual booking. I was a little late as i decided to wear heels, not expecting it to suddenly chuck down with heavy rain (i should've known...i was in London after all) on the way from London Bridge Underground Station which is approx a 10min walk.

In addition, i wanted to add that Google maps confused me slightly hence i ended up walking around in circles before i found the restaurant! (Therefore, please note, that the outside of the restaurant consists mainly of vertical wooden planks and is located of on its own, in-between cross roads.)

Image from Google Maps

Inside:

Arriving at the restaurant, i was greeted by a lovely lady, who took my dripping wet coat from me, then another gentleman directed me to my friends. Before i could place my handbag on the floor next to me, he placed a little box next to me, so it could sit on it, instead of on the restaurant floor or squished behind me on my chair, as per usual. I thought that was a nice little touch - super thoughtful. :)

We were sat towards the back hence i had a view of the open kitchen to my left and a view of the front of the restaurant where the majority of the other diners were seated. It was actually a really good seat as we got to see the chef's working hard with this bodies hunched over to ensure each dish was intricately decorated.

Image copyright of Restaurant Story. Also, the view from our table.

From our observations, we would say that 80% of the people in the restaurant were couples on dates, which is probably why they placed us towards the back, as we were a group of three.

The main restaurant floor was fairly bright but as the sun came down, the ambiance became more romantic as they lights were slowly dimmed.

Food:

The menu came in a shape of a story book and there were two dining options for the evening. The Full Story (£120), or Full Story with paired drinks (£195). We all went for the former as i had a bit of a cough hence did not want any alcohol and my friends only wanted one glass of wine each.

To soothe my throat, I requested hot water with lemon and a side of honey and had this throughout the meal. Surprisingly, there was no charge for this and i was very grateful as i had around 5 pots due to the annoying cough i had and due to the fact that the waiting staff wanted to make sure my drink was always hot.

The meal was split into five chapters, with each chapter containing a variety of dishes. Every so often, one of the waiters would bring over a dish then give us a very brief 'story' as to why a particular dish was created, and between the three of us, we believe we only heard approx 3-4 stories throughout the whole meal, with the remaining commentary being the standard explanation of ingredients used in the dishes. Slightly disappointing, as the website said they seek to tell the story through the food they served...hence, we were expecting a connected story on all of the dishes, or at least one story per chapter, but that isn't what we got at all. The stories we received was more along the lines of 'Growing up, Tom really liked x, hence he used a variety of this in this dish from x'...therefore, we felt the 'story' experience was a little underwhelming.

When you look at the menu, the dishes listed bring an element of mystery and intrigue and the number of dishes look reasonable for the price. Even though the dishes were small, it turned out that there were multiple snacks and treats that were not listed on the menu, meaning we ended up walking away feeling very well fed.

The souvenir menu which was provided at the end of the meal

The dishes we had were as follows:

Snacks:

Chapter I - Childhood

Chapter II - Garden

Chapter III - Sea

Additional Supplement Dish - Foie Gras (+£25)

Chapter IV - Land

Chapter V - The End

The Bill

The Good:

- Tasty food. Standout items were: Foie Gras, Pollock, Lamb, Lemon and the Beef Dripping candle for the novelty factor

- Nice surprise to see the beef dripping candle. Although the after thought of eating beef fat on bread was not exactly appetising, especially once the fat started to cool down and solidify

- Attentive staff who kept topping up my pot of fresh lemon water and honey

- We were absolutely stuffed by the end of the meal.

The Not as Good:

- There wasn't much of a story to the meal, hence we were all a bit underwhelmed as this was meant to be their unique selling point as stated on their website

- There were too many members of staff serving us the dishes. It shouldn't really be seen as a negative, but it would have been nicer if there was consistency as it got very confusing.