See more Daily Mail on Google - save us as a Preferred SourceBy TOM PARKER BOWLES, FOOD CRITIC AND AUTHOR Updated: 01:33 BST, 13 June 2026
A grand new restaurant in the revamped Olympia looks the part – but sadly falls flatIt’s certainly been a long time in the making. The new Olympia, that is: a grand and ambitious project that aims to give the rather faded Victorian grande dame not just a much-needed facelift, but a whole new lease of life, with a live music venue, two hotels, offices, bars and all the rest. I live around the corner, and the refurb has gone on for decades. Or so it seems. Anyway, it’s all looking very impressive indeed.Unlike Idalia, the first of its new restaurants, set on the ground floor of the Pillar Hall. The room is vast, with handsome, blood-red Grade II-listed marble columns and an elegant stucco ceiling. There’s a circular central bar and enough (admittedly high quality) plastic foliage to clad the set of an entire Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan film. We sit on a lavishly upholstered banquette, in the shade of a fake apple tree, in a room that has only a few tables filled. That’s to be expected. No conferences or exhibitions today, which will make up most of their trade. Service, though, is utterly charming: warm, sweet and professional, and they allow dogs, too. So far, so good. Sri Lankan chicken curry: ‘OK in a Qatar Business Class sort of way’Things start promisingly, with Korean fried chicken, all crisp batter, succulent thigh and decent chilli kick. Asparagus are respectable, with a soft poached egg, although the hollandaise is aggressively sharp rather than soothingly smooth. The vinegar totally overwhelms. Crab salad (£22) is plain dull, the crustacean obviously not picked fresh that morning, the mango unripe and bland, the whole dish fridge cold and woefully under-seasoned. We eat two mouthfuls and give up. To their credit, they take it off the bill.Herdwick lamb rump (£37) is cooked pink but, again, tastes curiously dull. Just like the underwhelming jus served on the side. A mild Sri Lankan chicken curry (a nod to Des Gunewardena, owner of D3 Collective, who runs the food sites here) is OK in a Qatar Business Class sort of way, but at £28, expensive and utterly forgettable. The three promised ‘sambals’ are simply commercial lime pickle, mango chutney and watery raita. Miles removed from the glorious pol or katta sambols that make Sri Lankan cooking so damned thrilling. By this point, we’ve had enough and leave. I just hope that Idalia, like Olympia, is a work in progress. Because despite being no more than three minutes from my door, you’d have to pay me to return.At these prices, we expect a whole lot more.About £50 per head. Idalia, Pillar Hall, 5 Olympia Way, London W14; olympia.co.uk/dine/idaliaRating:
