The Grand

We ate at The Grand in Burnley Street, Richmond the other night. The night started satisfactorily because we found a parking space without too much trouble. It was pleasant food in a nice room (even though it’s part of a pub!). It claims to be Italian but we're not sure if it's "modern" as claimed.  But it does seem to be authentic (can it be authentic and modern at the same time?) although we’re only amateurs at discerning that sort of thing. Some of the dishes were terrific, such as the asparagus spears with fried egg for entree. However, for mains, the grilled pork cutlet and roast duck with orange & juniper sauce were both fine, but we thought that each lacked something of a “spark” (we wondered if this was in the cause of authenticity).

The service was initially cool and detached, but picked up markedly when it was discovered that there was a linguistic affinity between one of the wait-staff (who was born in Bosnia) and several of our group.