http://trustedplaces.com/review/uk/london/bar-pub/1o12o81/the-fat-badger <b>The Fat Badger</b><br />London, 310 Portobello Road, W10 5TA, United Kingdom en http://trustedplaces.com/uploads/placepics/trustedplaces.comaPlacePic['name']}.140.jpg http://trustedplaces.com/review/uk/london/bar-pub/1o12o81/the-fat-badger http://trustedplaces.com/review/uk/london/bar-pub/1o12o81/the-fat-badger/1s6jo7
Review by alexgjohnson

Rating: 2.00
Tags:
Yuck. Many people hate Notting Hill, assuming it is full of pretentious young media types all thinking themselves far too glamorous actually to do anything useful. While largely not true of the area it is unfortunately completely true of the people who work at the Fat Badger, who are pretty, pretty lazy, and pretty thick. Service is poor - there's no two ways about it. The menu is pretentious, and the process of it arriving at your table at the same time as your companions' seemingly non-existent. The food emphasises fresh seasonal ingredients and this seemed to be the case - hence two stars rather than one - but there was nothing particularly memorable about its Gastropub 101 assembly. It's not as cheap as it should be for its corner of Golborne Road location. If the owner is reading this, I would suggest firing any member of staff who even looks like they might be hoping to land a celebrity, and taking everything else back to basics. Good, simple food well done is what a local pub can and should do. You're not Bumpkin and on present form you won't be.]]> Sat, 06 Sep 2008 18:07:50 +0000 /review/uk/london/bar-pub/1o12o81/the-fat-badger/1s6jo7494246640 alexgjohnson 51.520496767129 -0.20981846176294 http://trustedplaces.com/review/uk/london/bar-pub/1o12o81/the-fat-badger/1v44y8
Review by qwghlm

Rating: 2.00
Tags:
Silly name, irritatingly pretentious menu and the food is pretty average and overpriced. Drinks aren't cheap either. Atmosphere slightly lacking and decidedly of a certain demographic - trendy haircuts galore and not a state school education amongst the entire evening's clientele, one suspects. Still, not terrible, not by Portobello Road/Notting Hill standards in any case, and my experience of the pub was made tolerable by the half-decent music and the fact there's a Scrabble board knocking about the place.]]> Sun, 07 Oct 2007 17:51:18 +0000 /review/uk/london/bar-pub/1o12o81/the-fat-badger/1v44y81209383810 qwghlm 51.520496767129 -0.20981846176294 http://trustedplaces.com/review/uk/london/bar-pub/1o12o81/the-fat-badger/1m1218
Review by Jimmy_James

Rating: 3.00
Tags:
The advent of the Gastro Pub is something I've always held issue with. The vision of this happy medium is always somewhat marred by the nature of the combination; gastro in food (and price tag), pub in service.

So as not to risk seemingly tarring all with a similarly lackadaisical brush, there are exceptions- The Havelock Tavern in Brook Green, The Narrow in Limehouse, along with the Cod and a couple of others in East London, I've never found remiss in service. But they are unfortunately the exception and not the rule.

Nor, much to my disappointment, is the Badger. I live not a million miles from the corner of Portobello and Golborne Road; an oddly mixed area of the world, even by London standards. Alongside book collectors you can find wholesale Lebanese food sellers, antiques shops, edgy hair dressers and the (in)famous Trellick Tower.

The Badger seemed like a new proposition and welcome replacement to it's previous inhabitant, the Bed Bar. And from the outside it's certainly true. The pub is small and inviting, with soft lighting and comfy ready-worn-in sofas (is there a machine that does that?) and upstairs a small restaurant to seperate the pub-goers from the grazers.

All fine so far.

The menu is fine, with lots of unusually named Englishy sounding produce (tricklemore salad and saltmarsh lamb?), mostly seasonal (Rock Oysters in May?) and all well combined to give a limited, but tasty selection. The wine list does its job- I can recommend the Prosecco, which worked well with the oysters and is an affordable, sometimes preferrable, alternative to the champagnes.

The atmosphere was mute, particularly for a Thursday at 8pm, with few people other than our table of 4. This didn't seem to make an enormous amount of difference to the attentiveness of our waitress, who seemed to hold greater value in moving tables, or talking to her colleague than to respond to my frantic gesturing. Having wheeled my arms several times we did get her attention and her resulting manner was fairly indifferent to our plight, taking our order with a ruthless efficiency and indiscriminate lack of patience. My advice at this point is order everything you canwhile you have them, as subsequent attempts to order were even less fruitful.

My tomatoes on toast were fantastic... tomatoes on toast, and my fricasee of vegetables seemed to be little more than peas, mushroom and potato in a cloudy broth. To give its due though, it was tasty.

We attempted to finish off with some sticky drinks, 3/4 of them arrived and no explanation was giving as to the whereabouts of the 4th mystery drink. Perhaps we'd find it later somewhere, as a nice surprise!

And so we left The Fat Badger- one assuming he's Fat because he chooses to eat in places where he gets served, rather than his own establishment- with a somewhat heavier heart, moderately lighter wallet and slightly greyer hair than when we arrived; 4 starters, 3 mains, 2 bottles of inexpensive fizzy wine and 3 liqueurs coming to a grand total of around £150- somewhat conscientiously not including service- definitely left me feeling cheated, not being 5 minutes from Babes and Burgers, 10 minutes from Osteria Basilico and all that Kensington Park Road has to offer.]]> Mon, 14 May 2007 16:58:28 +0000 /review/uk/london/bar-pub/1o12o81/the-fat-badger/1m12181756191568 Jimmy_James 51.520496767129 -0.20981846176294