Brown's Hotel, Hix at Albemarle

Press Reviews (5)

• Marina O'Loughlin (21st May 2008)
  3/5 stars
  
  The critic begins by bemoaning the debased standards, as she sees them, of what passes for hotel-luxury in London, as compared to such cities as New York or Kyoto. She then moves on to the new(ish) restaurant at Brown’s Hotel in Mayfair, where the menu – “so chauvinistically Brit it should have a shaved head and a flag-flying white van” – generally pleases her.
• AA Gill (15th April 2008)
  3/5 stars
  
  After half a dozen paragraphs on penises, the critic turns his attention to the “cold wind blowing through [London’s] kitchens”. Such market conditions, he suggests, often inspire restaurants to revise their ‘offer’, as has been the case with this relaunched Mayfair hotel grillroom.
• Giles Coren (1st April 2008)
  Rating 8/10
  
  The critic announced the end of his tap water campaign, which has been both imitated (by the Evening Standard), and denigrated, by his Murdoch stablemate AA Gill (“the grand boulevardier of our profession”). On the new grill at the Mayfair hotel, he is generally very upbeat.
• Fay Maschler (13th March 2008)
  4/5 stars
  
  The Grill at Brown’s Hotel, in Mayfair, has been re-launched, notes Ms Maschler, under the direction of former Caprice boss Mark Hix. The menu is, appropriately, “very Hixy, meaning British ingredients carefully tracked down and prepared in a manner that suits their soul”. For example, when she saw Brown Windsor soup on offer, she thought “the new 'director of food’ was indulging in a spot of irony”. However, “it was a fabulous soup-plateful of meatiness with a back story of pot vegetables mercifully neither puréed nor rubbed through a sieve but served as an empire-building nubbly broth, rich and glossy as gravy”. And so the review continues as – largely – a hymn of praise.
• John Walsh (10th March 2008)
  4/5 for food
  
  The critic visits the new dining operation at “the capital's oldest operating five-star hotel, opened in 1837”, where ex-Caprice supremo Mark Hix is now making high-level input on the food front. It turns out that this is now a restaurant “that's almost belligerently hearty”, which the critic found “irresistible”. “The Grill may not win Michelin stars for Ferran Adria-style imagination or ambitiousness, but its commitment to British food, lovingly cooked to bring out its finest qualities, makes it an instant favourite. I'll go back as soon as possible.”