I must say I am shocked by the previous reviews. My partner lives close to La Gazette and we have eaten there on several occassions. The food has always been excellent and we have never had any faults with the service.

We have sampled quite a bit of the menu and have yet to find something we didn't like. The wine menu is incredibly extensive and reasonably priced.

I urge people to try for themselves, it's a quality restaurant at reasonably good value.

My partner and I went here for a Valentine's Day dinner. He booked it because it was one of the few places he thought was doing an a-la-carte menu instead of a set menu for the night. On arrival I could smell something burning. We were then told that it was a set 3 course menu and no other menu options were available. There were 2 choices for each course but our waiter told us we had to have one of each of them! The starter of crab was inedible. The chicken terrine my partner had was barely passable. It was clear that all the meals had been pre-prepared a long time earlier and left to sit and go off, waiting for the 80 covers they were expecting (the restaurant was completely full). When I asked our waitress if the food was fresh she said yes, walked away and sent over the manager. The French manager launched into a 5 minute tirade before even asking me what was wrong or letting me say a word. He said that the food was fresh but then admitted that it had all been pre-prepared as the restaurant couldn't possibly make the dishes fresh for 80 covers. I asked wasn't that what other restaurants do night after night? He clearly didn't care what we thought and didn't offer us any apologies for the food. The main courses and desserts (one of them was a toffee apple on a plate!) were similarly inedible. We drank our wine and left the food on our plates. We paid and left without complaining further - there was no point at the customer service here is nil. When we got home I was violently sick - I suspect that the crab had gone off whilst it was sitting in the kitchen all day. All in all this place is my worst London dining experience and I would never frequent this restaurant again even if you paid me.

Firstly the location, don't come here unless you like parking at the back of a dodgy industrial estate and hunting for the restaurant amongst blocks of flats. We arrived for our meal and were told there was no record of our booking despite booking by phone at lunchtime that day. It turned out that someone at the restaurant had booked us in for the wrong time on the wrong day. Thankfully it was a Wednesday and not too busy so there was room for us. In the course of sitting down and being offered drinks we were spoken to by three different waiters and rushed in to ordering wine. Having ordered the steak we were kept waiting 45 minutes as all waiters that night (under-staffed) were serving two large groups. There is no excuse for this as a large group would have booked in advance so the restaurant should have laid on more staff. When our meals turned up I was thoroughly disappointed - sitting next to some limp salad with a vinegar dressing was a piece of over-cooked tough steak. Having asked for it to be cooked 'rare' this was not acceptable. Neither was the fact that the waiter ommitted to provide us with steak knives. Accompanying this was a horrid old saucepan with a burnt handle containing some over-cooked, over-salted and greasy chips. We just wanted to leave but found it impossible to get any waiters attention due to their focus on the two large groups. Eventually I asked a waitress for the bill and she never brought it - 10 minutes later I asked again and it came. Upon payment the card machine could not get any signal and had to try another time. When I asked for a receipt to say the previous transaction had been cancelled I got a short response from the waiter saying that it would not be possible but that if he had wanted to steal money from me he wouldn't do it in such an obvious way. I can honestly say that this was the worst dining experience I have ever had in London - the atmosphere was non-existent and the play on 'French rustic' decor is poor. Avoid it!

Awful food. Poor service. Avoid like the plague unless you still want to taste salt the following day.

Having visited Gazette on a number of occasions I can safely say that the experience is consistent. The food is of high quality, the ambience is relaxing and the wine is generally very good.

Compared to a central London eatery the pricing is very reasonable and the quality frequently (and positively) surprising. Tucked away near the river, Gazette has turned into one of the true hidden gems in this area.

I cannot recommend this little oasis of calm highly enough and it has become a firm favourite with my wife and I.

Highly, highly recommended.