📍 Richmond TW9 3AB, United Kingdom
It’s a very nice place for a cup of coffee. We sat inside, enjoy the view of nature through glass. The seating arrangement is spacious, feeling very relaxed after long walking in the Kew. Cappuccino is creamy and smooth. We ordered French fries but have to wait until 12:00, very generous size and fresh. Will definitely come again.
Stopped at the Pavilion Bar and Grill during a visit to Kew Gardens and really enjoyed the outdoor seating - it’s a lovely spot to relax. I don’t usually go for salads but the one I had here was surprisingly good with lots of flavour. It did feel a bit overpriced for what it was but I guess that’s to be expected when dining inside Kew Gardens!
Visited on Bank Holiday, 5th May. I normally don’t eat at Kew because I’ve always been disappointed with the portions, price and quality but decided to give this place a go. The queue was rather long as only one till was in operation but it was working when we were buying tea to go. The serves at the till were friendly so no issues there. My friend and I ordered the cauliflower steak, my other friend had the aubergine and I ordered a side of fries to share. The flavours of the cauliflower dish were good however, all the mains were cold. The cauliflower was fine cold but try eating a crispy, cold block of polenta! I’m a Kew member and I got 20% off food here (current member offer) but I do feel I was ripped off. I would have been extremely disappointed if I had to pay £17 per main. As someone else stated in their review, the toilets here are so gross. Not sure if there’s a leakage problem or visitors and the toilets aren’t being cleaned regularly enough.
If you live anywhere on the tube and you haven’t got a membership to Kew you’re demented. Kew is a national treasure. Scrap that, it’s a world treasure. Even if you couldn’t give a monkey’s about plants or plant biology or victorian architecture, a more lovely walk in London is impossible to find. Burning the requisite calories to have earned a sit down at the Pavilion Bar and Grill won’t be difficult. Ingesting said calories once there you may find a little harder. The queue is long and only one person is taking orders at the till. I wondered if an acorn could sprout in the same time once planted but didn’t ask the server because I wasn’t sure she was an expert in that sense like the volunteers beavering away outside. The menu felt quite garden-y. A mainly veggie affair which felt good to eat al fresco in simple, smart, modern surroundings with a cafe vibe. I ordered a cauliflower steak with rose harissa, woodland mushrooms, mole sauce and crispy polenta. The missus ordered bbq aubergine, chimichurri, smoked pine nuts, miso and garden botanicals - whatever they are. Both dishes sounded like a level up from the usual cafe fare and we looked forward to them. The dishes weren’t a disappointment. They weren’t a resounding success either. Both were fairly well executed. Good textures, not bad looking at first glance. But on further inspection they were both a little miserable too. Not an abundance of anything. No great flavour explosion. Notenough ballast to satisfy a greedy guts who’s earned their fare after one lap round the park inc scaling the treetop walk. All a little limp. The aubergine had been hanging around a while. The sauces that accompanied the cauliflower squirted on a little clumsily and tasting a bit anaemic. Now if these dishes had been, say, £12, I’d knock the glasshouse on the head and make a bee line here instead. But at £18 a pop I won’t be rushing back. It did feel a little like they know you’re there now and it’s going to be a ball ache to find somewhere else to go. Forget about how glass makers have taken inspiration from Water Lillies, this lot have certainly learned a thing or two from the Venus Fly Trap. To be fair, you can enjoy the many splendours of Kew with your own picnic and that would be my advice. Theirs is a noble cause (Kew is a charity) and making up the numbers with some OK but overpriced food for hungry tourists is only to be expected. But for those who are in the know, there’s much better on offer outside the garden gates
Lovely views of the garden and we were lucky enough to sit outside in October to eat our lunch. Staff very friendly and not too long to wait for food even with lengthy queues.
The staff were very friendly, but everything else about or visit was very disappointing. The ordering app kept failing and I was charged twice when the first transaction appeared to fail (the app closed without warning). The manager was nice and refunded us, but we had been reassured by two waiting staff that we had not been double charged. (I had to log into my banking app to prove this.) The service was slow and disjointed, the queues were long. The menu was totally vegan, yet there was no indication of this from the advertising. (The sign out front showed a chicken dinner.) My friend needs to be careful with her diet and wanted food she recognised, so we only had drinks and went elsewhere. The table next to us was left with dirty dishes and several pigeons were feasing on the remains of someone's lunch, disgusting!
The celebrity chef menu. On the first picture is a millet salad without a grain of millet but full of quinoa. The second one is some designer name tomato and slaw.... Well, this is the first time I saw a slaw made from a single leaf. And child's bean burger was still half frozen, sorry, designer chilled, inside. 2 stars for very effective air conditioner, can't fault that wind...
Disgusting. The current food promotion is supposedly inspired by Anna Jones. We love her cookbooks and cook her recipes regularly. My wife has been a vegetarian for 20 years so vegan food is not new to me. This was bland, tasteless, dry, disgusting! We both saw it, tasted it to confirm it. No care and no love. Why not care about what you are serving. How many bad reviews do you need to change something? This place has been going down for the last year steadily. Real shame, we used to love eating here.
I was very skeptical having read bad reviews and seeing the 3.8 Google score. But in fact we really enjoyed it and if it were not for the massive waiting time (about 15min in the queue and then 30min for food, on a Saturday) I would have given it a 5/5. Menu is vegan friendly, I personally tried the celeriac burger which was interesting and good. The chicken seemed good and the veggies offer a lighter option. Most dishes come with a choice of one or two sides (a la Nandos). My only critic is to charge 20£ for a Beyond Meat burger is ridiculous! We are trying to encourage people to eat plant-based not discourage them by charging you twice the price for plant-based! There is plenty of places to sit down, inside and outside and given that this restaurant is the furthest away from the main gates, I’d say it’s probably the least busy (?!). Finally you can enjoy free filtered water, there is a ketchup/mayo/condiment spot and the toilets were clean.
You can contact Pavilion Bar and Grill at +44 20 8332 5000
You can find directions to Pavilion Bar and Grill by following this map link
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