Fine Food Specialist Reviews

Excellent products! Excellent customer service. Even up in the far north of Shetland they will endeavour to get your prime fresh meat to you!

I ordered a fresh duck foie gras and a 30g black truffle from Périgord.
What a disappointment …
The fresh duck foie gras was frozen, very bad quality with bruises and blood everywhere. And the 30g black truffle was finally 15g and didn’t have any taste at all. Used it for pasta and truffle foie gras but not taste at all. TO AVOID

finefoodspecialist.co.uk/ when you pay it changes to fineandwild.com/

Something isn't right there, how do you trust a product if the website changes?!


Im off elsewhere

I bought a Yakinaki as i've always wanted one like James Martin! What the website doesn't tell you is that it is too small to put any meaningful very expensive Japanese coal in and you can't light the fire in there... so you have to purchase a bbq kettle... pour them in and then have 15 minutes of low heat.... I asked to return and was left waiting 3 weeks and still not told how to return just that I should try and buy a kettle and use that then to message again if I still want to return.... The item then completely fell apart when I tried to clean with hot water as it is not ceramic it is potters clay.... I messaged over 2 weeks ago and still not a response... customer service and returns policy is so bad I won't be using again and it's a shame the sashimi scallops are lovely!

I'm not one to leave reviews, but I don't get all these bad reviews on here and it annoys me how misrepresented this company is based on them.

I placed 2 orders after seeing these guys mentioned on SortedFood (youtube), had some things that had to be sorted with one of the orders and Tom was super quick to reply and arrange everything. Spot on from a customer service point of view. Packaging was great. Quality of products was great. Price is super fair. Some comments here complained that the wagyu steaks were under the advertised weight so out of curiosity I weighed mine and it was 575g (advertised 500g). Even if it was a bit under, it's a steak that is cut by hand by a butcher so of course it can have some variation. Go weigh your Sainsbury's steak I bet it won't always be 240g on the dot, sometimes more and sometimes less.

In any case, rant over, I'll definitely be ordering again.

SPENT TWO AND HALF HOURS in road with engine running - NOISY and disturbed WHOLE morning here in Grove Road, Bournemouth, Dorset - They are a disgrace and do not care about anyone

TL:DR - Expensive Wagyu steaks ordered were good but underweight. Company disputes weight claiming their scales are accurate so it must be my scale, despite overwhelming evidence presented to the contrary.


I first used this company last year for my 20th wedding anniversary and was disappointed with the service. I had wanted to order some nice Wagyu steaks for my dinner with my wife. The online store has recently been updated, but even previously they had a good selection of Wagyu from different countries and differing marbling scores. Their big exclamation on the website is their next day shipping service, so I placed an order with three or four days to spare. Sadly my order did not arrive in time. When contacted their Customer Service emailed a reply stating something about being unable to indicate the shipping delays on their website. It was during the Covid-19 mess in 2020 and they blamed it as the culprit, but so many businesses have been using Covid-19 as an excuse for their poor service.

Fast forward a year and again wanting a special dinner I wanted Japanese Wagyu A5, but I didn't want an entire joint of meat costing in excess of £1000, I just wanted a few steaks. That is what sets Fine Food Specialists apart, their individually packaged Wagyu steaks - you don't have to spend a small fortune to try good meat. Delivery was quick and well packaged, but unfortunately on this occasion the meat that was delivered was noticeably underweight, and when I sent their customer service an email with questions and photos of the weights, the reply I received was, and I'm paraphrasing here, that they weighed several items on their scales and the weights came back as expected so it must be an issue with my scale. There's nothing quite like the feeling you get when you have been wronged by a company and are told it's your fault.

Except it wasn't. I borrowed three scales from 3 different neighbours, both digital and manual scales, and I bought a new commercial digital scale (at a considerable cost) to verify the weight of the meat, and though it does appear my old digital scale wasn't entirely accurate it was only off by about 20 grams. All borrowed scales and my new scale showed the steaks were all under the weight listed on the packaging, some of them by a considerable amount (Japanese A5 Wagyu steaks listed as 200 grams each, actual weight was approximately 140 grams each). These aren't cheap steaks either, costing between £35 - £55 each, this was a significant purchase and as a customer I deserved what I ordered. I can't treat this as a standard online order that needs to be returned because it's food that won't survive the return shipping, not to mention the cost of shipping. My only recourse is to contact their customer service and hope for help, and it didn't happen.

This has turned into an episode of "He said, she said" and it does no good to go back to their customer service because in the end I may be offered a paltry 10% off coupon for my troubles, but it won't solve anything and I don't feel like being insulted again. There isn't anything I can do but shop elsewhere. I know some people try to get a leg up and some out there will try to hustle companies just for their pleasure, but that isn't me. All I wanted was what I paid for and in the end I didn't receive what was paid for, so I cannot recommend purchasing from them. I certainly never will again.

Always been very happy with the quality and service of everything I’ve ordered from these guys!

Both my wife and I got sick after eating the veal brains purchased from this retailer. The brains were delivered frozen and I stored them in the freezer immediately after receipt. I cooked them by boiling for 15 minutes and frying for 10 minutes. Upon notification, support was friendly and made an effort to check the quality of the batch they have in their warehouse and ultimately offered a £10 coupon off next order (no refund). This is nice but overall my balance with the retailer is that I purchased £50 worth of veal brains which ended up either poisoning me or feeding my tiger worms.

Like several other reviewers, I too have purchased from this company several times and been very happy with the quality of their produces. However, one of the product we bought recently, the Handmade Terrine of Duck Foie Gras, gave us food poisoning although we stored it accordingly to the instructions and we ate it before the best before date. I emailed customer service twice about this serious issue but they chose to ignore me. This should have warranted an investigation to ensure that other foie gras terrines were safe for consumption. It is disappointing that FFS do not care about its client's health and sand they will lose our custom.

I paid a premium price for edible flowers for a cake decoration and to get them delivered on the weekend. Everyone was at home during the delivery window, but the driver never rang the doorbell, and they wanted to redeliver the flowers on another date when the flowers will be dead. Customer services do not respond on email or phone, and I had to raise a fraud case with Paypal. Quite ironic that they call themselves a fine food specialist when they clearly are amateurs.

We ordered 45 blinis to use on Christmas day. It was my own fault that I hadn't read the very small print saying " Freshly defrosted from frozen", but not my own fault that we weren't informed until their arrival that they were not able to be frozen again. Worse still, they had to be eaten within a couple of days of purchase ! Nowhere on this site were these instructions. We are two pensioners, and we had to throw them all away. Received a bland email from them offering 10% discount on our next purchase. There will never be a next purchase. Very let down by this organisation.

Like the last reviewer I too have purchased from this company several times and been very happy with the quality of their produce. But; I bought two very small bags of Jersey Royal potatoes earlier in the year (tot cost £20) expecting them to be of the highest quality. We decided to cook them the day after they arrived and both bags were filled with rotten potatoes. I took photos and sent them to their customer service. They could not have been more disinterested. I was not offered either replacements or a refund, instead they offered my 10% off my next order. Not happening.! Appalling way to treat a customer, I will not be ordering from them again.

I have ordered with this company for the last few years, first through a friend and in the last year on our own. Our last order was a disaster - the order had burrata which was not fresh/past their date, the sorbet arrived on a Saturday (we did not expect the order to arrive until Monday) and we found a pool of wasted food on our return. They did not want to take responsibility for their lack of communication and did not take any action when the complaint was done. NEVER buying from this company again. They clearly do not know what is customer service.

I have used the company before and was delighted with the fantastic whole beef fillets ordered on more than one occasion. Sadly, my latest order for fresh Porcini and Girolles mushrooms and 'Nobu style marinated Black Cod' was a disaster. The 'frozen' cod had defrosted, so we ate immediately instead of at the special dinner I planned for Saturday, the Porcini were less than fresh, in two boxes there was only one mushroom that looked remotely like the lovely fat example on the website, the rest were all stalk and 80% were very small. The Girolles/Chanterelles were excellent, almost as good as we were buying at markets in France a few weeks ago. My biggest gripe is the company are not answering the phone 'due to Covid' says the message, but they don't say that on the website or their order confirmations, so you would at least think they'd respond promptly to email complaints, but no, total silence. They have my money and clearly don't care. Companies like this are only as good as their last order and how they deal with complaints, they have very high prices, so it isn't unreasonable to expect high quality service. Be very careful.