The Refinery

Came here on a business lunch. The food was beautiful, very American in style. I had the chicken BLT. I thought it was horribly pricey considering sides are extra and the staff, although quick were not very attentive. Several times we were looking around trying to grab someone’s attention.
Apart from that. It’s lovely, bright and the food was yummy.

Between Great Portland Street and Warren Street, tucked away next to Regent’s Place, it has a large outdoor space outside, great for alfresco drinking and eating during the summer months. They do some really good pre-​order packages for £100, either the beer (20 bottles) and 2 platters, or the wine (2 bottles of Pinot Grigio, 2 bottles of Cabernet Sauvignon) plus two platters. The platters were a meat platter consisting of scotch eggs, chicken satay, mini beef burgers, picante chorizo, onion rings, chips; a seafood platter that had prawn lollipops, salt & pepper squid, smoked salmon blinis, fish finger sliders, onion rings, chips and the vegetarian platter consisted of flatbread, hummus & baba ghanoush, vegetable crudités, asparagus & parmesan, courgette tempura, green olives We ordered both packages for our birthday drinks celebration, so £20 a head for 10 of us, but you do have to give a £10 deposit per person to secure the reservation. It worked out really well. The service and atmosphere was great, the food and drinks were excellent, and everyone was happy.

I’m always a sucker for a bottomless brunch option, so I recruited the girls to join me for bottomless Bellini brunch at The Refinery Regents Place.
The deal is bottomless drinks — either Bellinis or Bloody Marys for an extra £15 over 2 hours of brunch.
The Refinery is super close to Regents Park, but tucked in a square in an office complex near to Warren Street, so busy during the week Wednesday through Friday and quiet at the weekend.
As a Drake & Morgan restaurant it has a very similar feel to The Fable, a clean space with lovely little decorative touches, such as the throws over the back of the chairs and seasonal displays.
What we came for though was the Peach Bellinis!
You could also choose Bloody Marys instead if in need of a hangover cure… We liked the Bellinis but were a little disappointed with the quantities (lots of peach purée making it very sweet) and also the wait between rounds (they couldn’t anticipate that we would be drinking them that fast!). Given that we were one of two tables on the brunch deal the service aspect wasn’t good — if it had been busy we wouldn’t have gotten a good deal on this.
But on to brunch…
Eggs benedict — this came with spinach too — very healthy and tasty too. Avocado toast came with a poached egg and Lauren ordered a side of black pudding. Whilst we loved the avo chilli egg mix the portion of black pudding wasn’t that generous! (I got mine with a side of bacon — nom! You can’t go wrong with bacon & avocado :)) And obviously all the poached eggs were perfectly cooked with runny yolks.
Blueberry pancakes were perfect — served with maple syrup, the blueberries were set into the mix and it was slightly crispy on the outside, but neither dry or cakey in the middle — just great!
As we had two whole hours to max out our bottomless experience, we had a few more rounds before deciding to check out the desserts…
Chocolate brownie to the max — served a la mode and with chocolate sauce, Sarah loved this one. The crème brûlée came with the largest biscotti I’ve ever seen!
I wasn’t ready to stop in the savoury food yet — so I ordered the chorizo scotch egg with paprika mayo, and Anne (another carnivore) chose the satay skewers.
What’s the verdict I hear you ask?! Well 2 hours of drinking always makes me happier, but we genuinely liked all of the food. It came to £35 a head, including all the food above and some extra orange juice and coffees, which I didn’t think was bad as everyone had at least 2 dishes or extras, so decent value for money and could have been done cheaper if you didn’t order extras and dessert!
Definitely worth checking out if you can bring a crowd, a little quiet if you are just a couple, although we saw a few families turning up for lunch as we left — so quite a varied clientele.

Great atmosphere on a Friday night, nice and buzzy but still able to book a table for dinner the day before. Spent a good 4 hours there and didn’t feel any pressure to be moved along at all which was great. The food was lovely — we got lots of little bits to share and I recommend them all highly: mac and cheese (althought the apple crumble style crust was a bit wierd), olives, bread basket, sweet potato fries and mini salads all yummy. Nice wine selection too and I loved the touches of fur everywhere!