Very like its Notting Hill namesake, a competent but quite pricey Chelsea chippy, whose point it is rather difficult to see.
We hadn’t felt in any great rush to check out this new Chelsea spin-off of the Notting Hill chippy of the same name: we went to the original when it just opened, and remembered it being not terribly good, and not terribly cheap (whereas its predecessor, ‘real’ – pre-relaunch – Geale’s had been both of these things).
It’s amazing how when things don’t change, they really don’t change. The newcomer (on the Chelsea site, originally Monkey’s, recently vacated by Tom’s Place) is just like its Notting Hill namesake was after its relaunch: not terrible good, and not terribly cheap.
Don’t misunderstand us. There’s nothing ‘wrong’ with the food, or the service, or the ambience at the new establishment at all. This is a competent enough, rather low-kew fish bistro, with perfectly pleasant service, and a somewhat tightly packed-interior.
But there’s nothing particularly right with any of these aspects of the operation either. Dull, uniform competence is very useful at budget price levels – as the original Geale’s, for example, used to demonstrate – but we’ve never seen the point of places whose only real appeal is that they are not positively bad at anything.
But perhaps that’s too negative. If you should find yourself walking through Chelsea Green when a thunderstorm strikes’
