"Fawlty Towers - Japanese Style"

A review of Satsuma Ltd by Claire s written on Sunday 29th of June 2008

Truly awful - I am sad to say

During my twenties I was happy to spend around two thousand pounds on dining here in total. Today I went back for the first time in three years with husband and toddler in tow, hoping for a reliable relaxed dining experience. I was really disappointed and will not be going again.

Although the decor and chef may be the same, everything else was about as bad as it gets. There was only one other diner there (whilst the wonderful Busaba which is up the road was heaving). My toddler decided to stay in his compact buggy as their highchair would have been too small. We chose a table which was as unobtrusive as possible to restaurant activities (or lack thereof). Five minutes later I was approached by a rude young waiter who started complaining about the buggy making it difficult for him to get to the rarely used spare till at the back of the restaurant. I know that it is only used if the place is so busy that orders and payments cannot be processed at the main till at the front. I pointed this out and he shrugged his shoulders saying that there was no way of knowing whether the place would suddenly be packed out. He had the audacity to contradict me regarding how much space my tiny buggy was taking up compared to a highchair even though he did not know his arse from his elbow wrt these types of kiddie dilemmas being a scruffy post-pubsecent student type.

I said that with a toddler, we would not be there for long anyway. I had not banked on this being due to diminutive portions and hyper-inflated prices, even allowing for the fact that I had not visited in a while. They whisked away my husband's plate even before he had finished chewing the last measley mouthful - bear in mind that there was STILL only the one other customer there.

To add insult to injury when my husband was paying using the hand held chip and pin machine, the waitress appeared to be taking her time at one point. It was only after we arrived home that we noticed that she had managed to punch in the options on the machine to wack on a discretionary gratuity of 12.5 percent (which they should have asked us about and had definitely not deserved). Head count upon our departure? Er...one and did I mention that the other place down the road was full (as were most of the other Wardour Street eateries) so we wont be the first customers to vote with our feet.

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