If restaurants were judged on names alone, then Paradise ought to win prizes. Located minutes from one of the most famous Victorian cemeteries, the resting place was immortalised in a 1927 GK Chesterton poem. In The Rolling Road, he declaimed “for there is good news yet to hear and fine things to be seen, before we go to Paradise by way of Kensal Green.” Your reviewer was disappointed that there were not more fine things on offer at a recent visit to this W10 restaurant.
There ought to be much to like about Paradise. It is a cool and cavernous building, bedecked in a shabby chic style long before the term existed. Imagine busts of angels (aping the nearby cemetery) alongside a DJ booth. There’s ample distressed wood and random antiques. High ceilings are in abundance, as are several nooks. Guests can sit in a mock Victorian boozer out front, enjoy a more capacious dining room towards the rear and also benefit from a secluded patio.
If only the experience lived up to the setting. Read the venue’s website and you might almost believe it. Paradise claims that food is at “the forefront” of everything it does and that guests can enjoy “decadent” dishes. Nobody told us. We liked the vibe, but what we ate was utterly unmemorable.
The Paradise angle appears to be classics, done well. Except they weren’t. Vegetarians are after-thought too. Who wants a bread starter followed by pasta in a creamy vodka sauce? Surely this is 2026, rather than mid-90s student-central. Even the omnivores in our group left feeling shortchanged. Starters were competent enough (grilled prawns on toast and breaded calamari). If only the same could be said of the mains. Your reviewer’s sea bream seemed to have had some sort of accident between the kitchen and the table. Not only was the fish dry but slopped discordantly next to an excessive pile of salad. Starch, there was none. A Caesar salad barely merited its description. Onion might improve your margins, but not your diners’ experience. We did not order desserts.
Sunday Roast is apparently where Paradise excels. Might your reviewer be brave enough to return? The venue may well come into its own on a winter’s day, when guests want to feel snug. A few relaxed tunes and a couple of ales might warm the cockles, but then again, the experience may feel more akin to purgatory than paradise.