Gran Paradiso

Heading out for dinner with no plans and 8 of your colleagues can be a challenge. But we managed to stumble across the Gran Paradiso. We were immediately greeted from the chill of the outdoors with a cozy restaurant and warm and friendly staff. Within moments, we had drinks in hand.
Gran Paradiso offers a traditional Italian menu with all the classics you would expect. Overall the food was good, the service was friendly and the place was quaint.

I’m a sucker for fairy lights in bay trees on either side of a restaurant door. I also like soft candlelight, and, it turns out, stuffed owls, stag heads, stylistic modern oil paintings of fruit on black backgrounds and dark terracotta walls. It was all very cosy, romantic and old skool (but not stuffy). I felt I was in the safe hands of business owners who know what they are doing and how to do it with confidence. In bright daylight it would probably look a little tired, but in the gentle candleglow I thought it lovely.
I imagine the paunchy middle aged regulars we saw tucking into their grub think of this as a ‘reliable little gem’. We people watched as we ate, and got the impression that most people knew the staff, enjoyed port and weren’t short of a bob or two. We imagined that people were using the place as an inexpensive, cosy little place for supper round the corner from their Pimlico townhouses. But this is all very judgemental and possibly fictitious, and I should not be encouraged.
We had bread and olives, mains, desserts and half a bottle of wine for £20 a head.
The food was average, but scoffing average Italian comfort food is no chore. I do wish people would stop putting too much gelatine in my panacotta (it should *tremble* people!), but never mind.

I called in advance to book a table for 14 people at a quiet time (5.45pm-7pm). I was told this was ok.
The evening started off on a sour note, as the managers approached us and started to severely tell me off for asking if I could pay for the drinks seperately. From that moment on, even though they were apparently ‘very busy upstairs’ the managers hovered around our table, making us feel extremely unwanted and uncomfortable.
The food was amazing though, and the waiters were fine, it was just the fowl attitude of the managers that means I will NEVER be setting foot in that place again.
They even tried to charge me service charge after treating us so badly! They said ‘you have to pay it in a place like this, this isn’t Nandos’ — I wish I HAD gone to Nandos after all! In the end the manager called me ‘offensive’ for refusing to pay the service charge.
So if you want to go for a pre-​theatre dinner I don’t suggest this one! Try queuing at Prezzo or something…

Gran Paradiso lingers quietly in amongst a row of brightly lit and trendy new eateries on Wilton Road. It doesn’t compete for your attention and as a result you might easily miss it. This would be a tremendous shame as this restaurant serves fantastic Italian food. All the usual pasta, fish and meat options are offered along with some more unusual dishes such as quail. And although it’s reasonably expensive, it’s worth every penny. The only downside was that I never quite worked out how to qualify for biscuits and chocolates which came with coffee. I didn’t get any :-(