From Laura Porter,
Your Guide to London Travel.
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Harden's produces an annual guidebook to London restaurants which has been in print for over 15 years and its annual survey of London's restaurants is probably the largest survey of its kind. Both its book and web site have search facilities by area, price, and cuisine.

The Bottom Line

London restaurant listings with comments from nearly 8,000 real diners who all paid for their meals so can be completely honest.

Pros

• Regularly updated restaurant reviews
• Available as an annual book and online
• Free registration for online searches

Cons

• Wasted words in some of the 5 line reviews - more facts needed
• Takes time to find your way around the book
• Needs a clear key to help new users

Harden's London Restaurants - Book Review

The concept of the Harden's London Restaurant guidebook can't be faulted but the book design proved problematic. I lent the book to a few avid restaurant-goers and all had problems finding the information they wanted. The main part of the book is alphabetical by restaurant name, but most people wanted to search by type of cuisine, e.g. Indian food, or by area of London, e.g. Soho. At closer inspection, these options are available, and are listed in the Index, but it seems the users I tested the book with were not able to find them as quickly as they wanted to. The people I asked seemed to think you could only find a review of a restaurant you already knew the name of by looking in the alphabetical listing, and there was then huge debate about the comments for each restaurant. Differences of opinions are absolutely fine with restaurant reviews as we don't all have the same tastes.

The publisher tells me the guide is the only restaurant guide in the world, that they are aware of, to give indexes grouped by area and listed by descending price, so it's a shame my testers didn't find these indexes. Maybe the book should start with these Indexes and move the alphabetical listing to the back? Personally, I found the maps of London areas very helpful with all the restaurants in the area shown. It would make this a great guidebook to have in your bag when visiting a new area and looking for the perfect dinner venue.

The restaurants are rated by Food, Service, and Ambience (F S A). I feel it would be useful to have a key run along the bottom of every page reminding the reader what these letters stand for, and to remind us that with the ratings from 1 to 5, 1 is "exceptional" and 5 is "poor" but I'm told other guides don't do this.

Each restaurant's listing is a compilation of the comments received during their annual survey but I heard from all first time users how annoying the quotation marks were and that the four or five lines allocated to each restaurant could provide more facts as there were often wasted words.

Harden's London Restaurants guidebook could benefit from some design tweaks, but it should be applauded for its regular updates of so many restaurants.

Harden's London Restaurants - Web Site Review

www.hardens.com

Harden's online restaurant guide has addressed most of the problems readers faced with the guidebook. The first thing I noticed on the homepage was the chance to search for a restaurant by area, price, and cuisine. The search results are clearly displayed using color-coding to highlight the price range, and further information on each restaurant, including a map, just one click away. The "People's Verdict" seems to use a few more words than in the book so they can give you a better overview.

Online registration is required to view the full listings but it is free and they guarantee not to disclose your personal details. There is even the option to go to a live table booking service for restaurants with an arrow to the right of the name in the search results. Be aware that Harden's also has a UK restaurant guide, so do search by London area or postcode.

The online restaurant listings have 3 numbers next to the name, e.g. 3 4 4 and I couldn't find a link to explain this meant Food, Service, and Ambience. Maybe the regular Harden's user knows this but it doesn't help new users.

Harden's online guide is well-designed and has good search facilities. All who register online have the opportunity to get involved with the annual restaurant survey. If you do submit comments then you will receive a free print copy of the latest London Restaurants book.