Aquavit London

Excellent food and drinks in lovely surroundings with excellent service.

Excellent restaurant in St. James’s Market a few minutes from Piccadilly Circus. Delicious, beautifully presented dishes from the Nordic countries, in particular Sweden. The meatballs and Beef Rydberg never disappoint. Very helpful and professional service. As repeat guests we were offered a glass of Prosecco. Nice touch! Beautiful dining room with high quality Scandinavian tableware. Very reasonable prices for a Michelin starred restaurant in central London. I can highly recommend this restaurant.

Excellent food, especially the herring. Lovely drinks too

Great service. Ordinary food. However the dessert of Bird nest is quite something! Very good!

Service started smoothly but soon hit a traffic jam that led to us arriving late to the theater.

The food is amazing but I was bothered endlessly by the staff cutting me off all the time asking 'is everything okay... or can I remove this plate or do this" This restaurant has always received 5 stars from me but please educate your staff on proper service etiquettes. I never managed to finish telling a story...
PS. its Christmas... it's in poor taste not to have any Christmas decorations inside your venue.

Food was lovely especially the meatballs and beef. The place is classy and well decorated. Only downsides are they got our starter order wrong (but rectified quickly) and the price which is in my opinion a little high. Would recommend though.

Great food, lovely atmosphere!

We were satisfied with our visit to the restaurant. We ordered the oyster and pre-theatre menu. It was one of the best oysters that I had in a while. The non-alcoholic cocktail was also exceptional. Most of the service had a Personal touch. Very attentive staff.
In terms of improvement, the bread basket was placed in front of us without much explanation to the types of bread so I had to enquire about it. I wish this could have been explained earlier. The Swedish meatball was slightly too salty.
Apart from these minor slips, I was satisfied with my experience at Aquavit.

I absolute loved this restaurant. Beautiful setting, amazing food and great service. I will definitely come back and I would not hesitate to recommend it to anyone. It is pricey but well worth it.

Forgot about the birthday of my wife. Aside from that the food is delicious and the space is beautiful.

You have to like the venue and we were ready to go with the flow. Everything that was fish or seafood was very fresh and delicious - but not really elaborate. The venison was cooked perfectly, the sauce was nowhere near as refined as one would expect for a one Michelin star.
Service was nice but totally lacking for that class of a restaurant. Staff was more busy to chat and have fun than to worry about customers.

Top-tier international restaurant

Nice ambience and food was tasty but the portions were so small that I have to say it is not good value

We specifically requested for express lunch menu during reservation. But they claimed menu not available. Service was slow and unfriendly. Food was good. Lunch took more than an hour : mostly just waiting to be served.

This was our second time at this restaurant (the first time was amazing) but unfortunately the experience was very different. Food great. Service terrible. So many issues with the service, lack of attention. It was after a show and it felt that they couldn’t wait to close the restaurant. Terrible...terrible..terrible!

Go for the Herring and the Monkfish. Really good service during our dinner. Not cheap but good experience.

Really great Scandinavian food with excellent service to finish it off. Pre-theatre menu was fab and a really good price.
Be wary however that the cheapest wine on the menu is £42 so it’s only for special occasions!
Would go back for one though!!

Pre theatre meal. It was fab. Staff were excellent.

It is always very good.
The staff are very friendly but very inattentive. We had about four different waiters. Once The food order is placed they tend to forget about one altogether. Managed to muddle up our coffee order and forgot to bring milk. Not a big deal, it happens. But when I reminded the girl who served it and requested some, again, it never arrived. I’m only pointing this out because I think it is symptomatic of the way they run the front of house. Everything else is great.

enjoyed the meat balls/service/ambiance etc and exotic flavours. It was expensive though.

Bad service and okay food, wouldnt go back - was for a business lunch

Waiter was unbelievably rude over and over again.

Beautiful restaurant with great value pre theatre set menu. It was quiet when we arrived but busy by the time we headed to the theatre - 2mins walk away. Fab service and delicious Scandinavian food - highly recommend

I treated my mum to a lunch and we were both so impressed with the refreshing and interesting plates we ate. Aquavit is beautiful, modern and delicious with helpful and friendly staff in an easy location near to Piccadilly circus. I would recommend and return.

Amazing food, amazing wines, amazing service and of course an amazing dessert !!!

Lovely food and nice atmosphere.... service touch and go. Asked to be seated and was ignored, however some staff better than others. Overall a pleasant experience

Good restaurant and good food. Slightly pretentious and expensive. The sommelier only seemed interested in talking to me and ignored my girlfriend. The waiter was great.

pre theatre meal for four of us. great friendly staff. food amazing. wine expensive.

This was our second visit, the first 18 months ago and we loved the place then and had been looking forward to a revisit. It was therefore very disappointing to find the prices have shot up and the wine-list is eye-wateringly expensive. Starters were good, though not as vibrant and tasty as our first time. My wife's monkfish was good, but only that - nothing stellar. My turbot was cold and tasteless with only the sauce adding any flavour. I was offered a replacement, but reasoned that it would only be hotter and was unlikely to gain any flavour as a result, and by the time it arrived, my wife would be finished her meal. I also hoped that at £38 and with a Michelin star, I should not have needed to complain.
I mentioned it a second time to the waitress who cleared our table and she apologised and said she would mention it to the chef and the manager. When the bill came there was no comment and there had been no revision to the bill. We asked for service to be removed and it was done grudgingly and another half-hearted apology issued.
There was also a strange interlude when we were given a plate of one small blob of ice-cream with 'Happy Anniversary' on it. I had not mentioned this on the reservation, so they could only have got the information from my wife's Facebook check in. Some may find this nice - we found it creepy and intrusive. Also, as we wanted to leave we asked the sommelier to pour the remainder of our wine. He was reluctant to do so as his manager would not be happy. Surely the idea is to make the customer happy, not his manager?
So overall, we felt that the whole experience was pretty dispiriting and disappointing and it was nowhere near as good as February 2018. With the service removed, the meal still cost over £200 and unfortunately was not worth anything close to that amount.
We had looked forward to our return, but we will not be back.
Oh well, at least the play was good.

I was cold during the meal as we were sat next to the door. The staff were not attentive. They didn’t ask us if we wanted another drink during the meal, and we constantly had to get their attention. We waited a long time for a our food and when the food came it was underwhelming. Just feel for the price you pay, it is not worth it.

Great customer service

We ate here ona friday evening. It was not full at all and felt quite quiet. I think this is more a place for a business lunch, or a special weekend lunch. The food was all delicious, but perhaps not that 'exciting' for a michelin star. The most surprisingly good dish by far was the smoked eel. That said, we loved it and would return. The staff were super friendly and unstuffy. Decor was gorgeous.

One of the best dining experiences in London. Beautiful 2-storey volume space, huge windows, wonderful scandinavian design aesthetic, quiet enough but lively, able to have decent conversations. The 3 pots of herring as a starter were excellent and the gravlax was superb. The duck was the best duck I have ever eaten. The food was executed perfectly but was not pretentious. The staff were knowledgeable and friendly. The service faultless.

We had the pre-theatre menu which we thought was good value for London. The starters were delicious especially the herring, chicken pate & blood sausage. However, we were slightly disappointed with the meatballs which were rather bland. All the staff were lovely though a bit too attentive, we lost count how many times different staff came over to us which wasn't particularly relaxing especially when our beers kept being topped up when we are quite capable of doing it ourselves.
All in all a good experience but not for a cheap night out (the wine list is mind blowing...The waiter recommended a £95 bottle of pinot noir & that was one of the cheaper ones!!)

We had a wonderful time here! We sat for dinner on a Monday later in the evening, so the restaurant was relatively quiet. Even if it had been busy the tables are well organized to create private spaces for each party. The over all ambiance was amazing. The warm lighting, high ceilings, and classy- yet comfortable- design yielded a excellent dining space. Additionally, the waitress was personable and helpful; she gave great recommendations, telling us her favorites as well as offering a plate adaptation to better accommodate our meal. The liver pâté is a must order, and the pickled herring trio and venison tartare are stand outs. Would return to eat all three. Furthermore, save room for the arctic birds nest dessert. The kitchen has crafted a beautiful, modern, and unique dessert in presentation and flavor; it seems to be right out of a ‘Chefs Table’ episode- but at a reasonable price. The other dishes were a little pricey for plate size, but we both left the meal full and beyond satisfied with our experience, and the final price was not unexpected for such a high quality meal. I am looking foreword to returning to the London location as well as trying the original in NYC.

The food was amazing. Each course was well thought out by the chef and the mix of flavours was amazing !
However the staff need to be trained I ordered the duck my friend ordered the lamb
And the server said both dishes were duck when we said she ordered lamb he just shrugged and said sorry it’s both duck on closely looking at the plates we realised he had brought lamb but didn’t know the difference. Another server kept forgetting to bring us water and wax just plain rude. The drinks are. Watered down ver