Est Caffe

The fact that I can be bothered to write a review about an airport outlet says it all — Est Caffe is a very pleasant surprise. I would probably not make a point of getting to the airport more than an hour early in order to have a meal here, but it is the perfect place to while away the waiting time if your flight is delayed.
While the queues outside Giraffe were ridiculous, I was seated immediately at Est — oh well, second attempt — as I was by myself the waitress tried to hide me away by the bins at first. I ended up with a more relaxed seat and with a surprisingly attentive waiter. I spent well over an hour here and was not hassled to move on — also plenty of time to see lots of other single diners come and go.
The biggest surprise of all: the mushroom pizza I ordered was not just OK but one of the best I’ve had in a long time. The side salad of rocket and parmesan was very generous. Overall I overdosed on olive oil on cheese, but it was all very tasty.

I was very impressed by the quality at Est Café, given that it is an airport café. Cool menu, great drinks, and very polite service. Kudos!

Restaurant is located in terminal 1 at Heathrow. Be sure you have time before your flight, as the service can be a bit slow. Their pizzas were pretty good, especially for airport food!

Probably the best out of term 1 Restaurants

Not a fan of this place at all. First the food: while the salad I got was decent, they did not list PEPPERS as an ingredient on the menu. This drives me nuts. Particularly when you are ordering a salad, you expect all the vegetable ingredients to be listed on the menu. UGH! I hate peppers and was so annoyed by this. They also failed to mention that most of the salad consists of peppers. There were more peppers than there was lettuce in the thing. It took me about 10 minutes to pick them all out and then they left their revolting taste on the lettuce.
Next disappointment: the pizza. It was bland and dry and didn’t come out hot enough. The only redeeming quality of the pizza was the mushrooms that came on top. I ended up only eating a piece of pizza or two and then scraping the mushrooms off the top of the rest. It was a real shame because i was really craving pizza but have had microwavables much better than this. Barf!
Then, the service. A couple waiters bounced between us and were for the most part friendly but very slow. Mostly stood around the bar chatting amongst themselves. The worst came at the end though when it was time to pay. The waiter brought the credit card swipe machine over to the table which was fine. But you have to enter a tip on the machine and the waiter was hovering over me watching and I felt pretty pressured. I wish he would have stepped off not looking over my shoulder and given me a minute to calculate. Instead I found the hovering kind of rude/​obnoxious, and messed up with my tip calculation because I didn’t have time to think it through and ended up severely under-​tipping him. Oops. I actually don’t feel that bad about it because I felt like the looking over my shoulder was designed to pressure me to give a high tip.
Least favorite place I have eaten at in Heathrow.

I eat here essentially every time I fly through LHR Terminal 1 International. The food isn’t world class, but for airport fare it is very respectable, with a diverse menu and good coffee.

When I have a layover in terminal 1, I always eat at this restaurant. I absolutely LOVE their lasagna!

Oh my goodness. So, flying short haul without lounge access, I circled the F&B offerings in Heathrow Terminal 1, trying to work out which would be the least vile. I had low expectations. But I also wanted a glass of wine, which ruled Pret a Manger out. Giraffe looked diabolical, the caviar bar is the stuff of nonsense, and what was on the tables at the ‘pub’ looked fiendish. There seemed to be a couple of decent sounding dishes on the menu at Est Caffe, so I settled for that. The chicken salad I ordered was so terrible that words cannot do it justice. There were two tiny shreds of overcooked chicken, drenched in cheap balsamic, and perhaps a teaspoon of avocado to go with it. What there was, in abundance, was tinned mushrooms. Tinned mushrooms. In a salad. Actually: tinned mushrooms, period?! They made up perhaps two thirds of the plate. It was one of the most revolting things I’ve ever seen or tried to eat. Being able to produce a half decent chicken salad for a tenner really shouldn’t be rocket science. But the salad at Est Caffe was willfully foul. It’s as if they’re punishing you (right down to the violent price points) for daring to fly. The waiter was nice enough though. Shame.

Classic airport café so not very exciting. However, the Café Latte was really good and they serve a variety of different fruit juices.

I just visited this venue when we went to Hungary for Christmas. We usually try new restaurants every time we travel somewhere. I’m a restaurant manager in central London, and used to check the service, cleaning, food quality and so on all around we go out. This is just a bad habit of mine and still enjoy my food :) During my fifteen years of catering this is the first time I write a review, because I don’t bother too much on spending time to share my opinion with others, I just collect experiences for my own improvement. But this time I have to let everyone know that Salvatore from est Café at Heathrow T1 made my day on the 24^th of December 2009 when my wife my son and myself visited the site for a quick lunch. I’d like to recommend everyone to have a word with this generous staff. Probably it run well for me because I tried to speak Italian with him, but he generally does his job professional. Thank you Salvatore, I hope you leave such as nice experiences in others as you did with us.

One simply can’t find any modern, social gathering point without a decent Italian restaurant. Oh, and if you know of such a place, then it is best you remove yourself promptly. Est Café, Heathrow Terminal 1 is perfect for a family meal, an awesome breakfast in awesome visual surrounds that includes the expanse of Heathrow and the throngs of people all en route to somewhere else.
The best paninis, pizzas and salads can be found here, real kiddie favourites, as well sharing platters, pastas and a few other all round Italian food choices. Prices are decent, and service is above average. Just don’t think you’ll be able to host any real Mafia-​style meetings here, the security around Heathrow is pretty tight.