Dolphin Bar and Grill

DISCLAIMER: this review only applies to the bar & grill, not the hotel.
I’ve never had a wait staff/​kitchen staff screw up orders so many times in one meal. Everyone in my party got the wrong dish and the service was extremely slow. If you ask for tap water it takes 20 minutes to get and you have to constantly remind them to bring it.
Once we actually received our food, several people said that their dishes were too salty to eat. One person even said that the spinach tasted rotten. ROTTEN. Salty is one thing, but rotten?
Even if you discount all the issues with the food and service, it’s a mediocre at best restaurant. Normally that wouldn’t be so bad, but for the price my expectations were higher.
tl;dr
Overpriced and poor service.

Sometimes I have to wonder what planet my fellow Unilocalers are on, especially when they review a place like this highly.
I stayed here on my usual monthly trip to London and thought I would try the whole «Corporate Housing» thing instead of a hotel. I got the studio variety rather than the one bedroom variant and it felt more like Student Housing rather than Corporate. It is to accommodation what a tent is to accommodation, very basic with a door so flimsy that it is rather a kin to the zip on that tent.
Here’s the kicker however, there is no air conditioning — perfect in winter but hideous at any other time. Admittedly we don’t get the hottest of weather in the UK but having to sleep with the window open to get a little breeze is unacceptable. They do provide a small fan which really cools the place down. Not.
The Wifi is terrible and to add insult to injury you have to pay £10 for it.
The breakfast in the Bar and Grill place was acceptable and the service good but even taking that into account I won’t be returning.

terrible, really terrible.
went last night for a friends birthday dinner. we asked for olives for a pre dinner bite for the table. they said they didnt serve olives but had some in the kitchen. brought out about 7 olives in the smallest bowl possible… and then charged £2.75 for the pleasure.
ordered t bone steak, medium. the steak was soooo thin! and for £18.75 i was shocked. they need to learn a thing or 2 from the butcher and grill in battersea about portion size!
one diner asked for the duck and asked for it to come «pink» the server didnt know what she meant. needless to say it didnt come pink.
wouldnt recommend this place to anyone.

I had an amazing stay here in London this weekend. The flat was spacious (for a European hotel), clean and sophisticated. The bedroom had a huge closet, bed, tv, and its own door, allowing privacy and gives off the impression of a real flat. The bathroom was huge and clean with lots of fluffy clean towels. Soaps and shampoos were replaced each day, so we never ran out. The salon had a faux fireplace, tv, huge mirror, coffee table, desk, two chairs with a matching table between, a huge comfy couch (where I crashed), and a door –allowing the salon to serve as a second private bedroom. The mini kitchen was clean and had everything one would need for a long term stay: complimentary instant coffee and teas, kettle, a set of knives, eating and cooking utensils, pots and pans, cups and saucers, plates and bowls, a washing machine (for clothes), oven, stove and microwave. Room service cleaned the flat each day, making the stay even more enjoyable –no cleaning up after myself. Complimentary breakfast at the Dolphin Café was included, it isn’t really vegan friendly and the Café has a dark interior –like eating inside a cave, and also a view of the indoor pool. I didn’t really like the fact that it overlooked the pool because I could smell the chlorine. I also didn’t like how they did not have a patio seating area, especially since the Dolphin House has a nice garden area, aka the Dolphin Square.
I most definitely had a great stay here. The neighbourhood in which this hotel is located is nice, quiet and friendly. Very safe and not crazy urban at all. There’s a real sense of community and sophistication here. I’m officially spoiled… as if I wasn’t to begin with! =P My friends love me!

The good:
cute
clean not far from the tube
nice neighborhood
good indoor pool
The annoying:
housekeeping will call non-​stop to clean the room when you are trying to sleep in
anyone that comes up to your room will have to leave his or her passport at the front desk
no air conditioning

Pimlico is a quiet part of London, only 1 or 2 stops away from Central London. Dolphin House is 3 blocks from the Underground station.
I stayed in a «single» for 10 days recently. That included a «King» bed which was really 2 twins that were pushed together. The «dip» in the middle was a bit annoying, but not a big deal. It also included a sink, microwave, refrigerator and some plates /​utensils. Larger rooms also have a stove and washer/​dryer. There is a laundry room in the basement with 6 washers and 5 dryers and they are free to use.
The hotel was clean, quiet, well staffed and a bit cheaper than other parts of London. it has recently been remodeled, and seems to have been well done. My bath had limestone tiles on the wall, modern sink and tub — and the BEST shower I’ve ever had in London. Lots of hot water!
Unlike the other reviewer I didn’t experience any false fire alarms. And my internet service worked well — but I used the «Guest1» network, not the one that required me to do some configuration on the Dell PC hidden behind the flat panel TV. I agree there isn’t CNN or premium channels, but I was in London to go out — not to watch TV.
I stayed here because a friend stayed about 4 years ago and highly recommended it. I second his recommendation.
BTW, it is much cheaper to book and pre-​pay for your stay. But the downside is there are no refunds if you decide to leave early. It was cheaper to book via Orbitz than any other site I found.

Our place to stay when in London town. The first time we came here we got the 1 bedroom which was amazing. In addition to a good size bedroom with a kind bed and 300 thread count linens and proper pillows, you also get a living room that has a couch and flat screen tv. The bedroom also has a flatscreen tv so wherever you are you can turn on the tube. The bathroom was very large, esp for european hotel standards. 2 sinks! The kitchenette was nice to have even tho we never used it.
The last time we came here we could only get into the «run of house» room which is a standard hotel room. No separate living room, but you still get a good sized bathroom and the room itself is about as large as any other hotel in London so it wasn’t too bad at all.
I agree that the internet service here is awful. We’ve never gotten the in-​room PC to work and the front desk is useless in this regard.
The best thing about Dolphin is the location, it’s in a quiet area near the Thames river. It’s only a short 3 – 5 min walk to the Pimlico station where you can catch the Victoria line. Best thing is when you get on and go northbound (towards everyplace you want to go), it’s usually empty since it gets full on the next stop, Victoria. And being off the Victoria line is easy to connect to any other line that goes to all the parts of London. Another nice bit about Dolphin is they have a lot of services like a small convenience store, a laundromat/​dry cleaner, shoe repair, hair salon etc. It doesnt have certain hotel amenities but for someone that already knows the town pretty well (or doesnt) it’s a much better option than most out there.

The Dolphin House (aka Dolphin Square, aka Dolphin Apartments, aka Dolphin Square Hotel, aka…) is a lovely complex of serviced apartments located in Pimlico, London.
The location is not very central with regards to the big sights in London, but it’s quite close to the Pimlico tube station which will get you anywhere pretty fast and it’s nice to have some perspective and not be right on top of all the touristy areas.
The apartments are quite nice, very clean, and well set up. Though, they are not nearly as spacious and pretty as they are presented on the website.
We booked a 1 br, and got a 2 br which was very handy for our extra bags and much appreciated. The apartment had flat screen tv’s, tasteful furniture and décor, and a well set up kitchen with all the appliances you could need (even a washing machine)! They also have a heap of facilities on premises like a sport club, pool, and shopping area.
Now for the down points — the internet service is infuriatingly poor. It could have been the single most horrendous internet experience I’ve had since the days of dial up! I was particularly steamed because I had a heap of work to do online and nothing worked. There’s no IT guy there, and the front desk was useless.
They claim to offer high speed wifi with 4mb speeds but I was running tests online and getting mostly 0.25mb to 0.50mb when I wasn’t getting kicked off the network. This is a bit technical for the every day user but when I ran line quality tests, they had a ping time of 2000ms and a data packet loss rate of 25%. In short, the internet didn’t work.
I probably wouldn’t mind so much if it was free, but they charge 30 pounds a week to use it! For that kind of price, how about furnishing a signal that doesnt boot off the user when he tried to do crazy things like go to
.
Also, while I’m not a huge tv fan, they give you no premium channels, so you don’t get CNN, ESPN, FoxNews, or anything like that. Just a heap of local channels which are fair at best.
Finally, the Dolphin House has an ultra modern fire alarm system which goes off all the time. In 12 days, there have been no less than 4 false alarms, and who knows how many more when we weren’t around. The ones in the daytime are not nearly as bad as the ones at 2am. You wake up and you’re like «what the hell, do I run out, do I ignore it?». While it’s there for an essential purpose, their system definitely needs some fine tuning.
In the end, despite my gripes, the complex is great and the service is top notch. It’s a great place to stay if you are coming to London for an extended period of time.

Without many pretensions this restaurant serves as a place to grab a bite and go. Ideally after visiting the very chic gym that is located in the same compound of buildings. The day I went I had a light, but I took interest in the info they had on the menus, which are printed in recycled paper. It seems they have tried to make this restaurant a very eco friendly place, using only products form the very shi-​shi Daylesfordorganic, this guys have great ingredients but they are not cheap, so a paid 4.95 for a ham and cheese sandwich. It’s pricy considering that the same sandwich with a really good taste from Prêt a Manger for almost half that price. Still I give kudos to the people here for trying to give good food, great products, and a good dose of eco-​conscience.