Hélène Darroze, The Connaught Hot…

Press Reviews (13)

• Jay Rayner (15th December 2008)
  
  The Observer’s man, reviewing this Mayfair dining room some months after its opening, comes to the same very critical view our own review, rather closer to the opening date, did. He finds “[t]wo of the very worst dishes ever to be served to me at this level; food which creates a whole new category of awful, which encourages you to pick up one of those shiny silver forks and stab it into the hand of the nearest waiter”. Gosh, that bad.
• Matthew Norman (22nd September 2008)
  7.5/10
  
  “[F]or all the veneration of Mademoiselle D - a double Michelin star holder in France and one of the planet's top-ranked female chefs - it is still the service rather than the cooking that dominates”, at this relaunched Mayfair hotel dining room, says the critic. The food may, generally, be good, but eating here is still a “slightly unnerving experience”.
• Marina O'Loughlin (17th September 2008)
  4/5 stars
  
  Despite a bill that makes the critic “gasp and stretch [her] eyes”, she succumbs to the charms of this grand Gallic restaurant in Mayfair – which is one of the most critically-disputed of recent times – where she eats some “extraordinary things”. “Flavours throughout are gutsy and vivid, those of Darroze's home turf, Landes in France's gastronomic south-western heartland.” Not all of the food is mind-boggling, but “hits far outweigh misses”.
• Giles Coren (2nd September 2008)
  5/10
  
  The review explores the differences in opinion between AA Gill, who described the food at this grand Gallic dining room in Mayfair as “just exquisite”, and Giles Coren’s own view to the contrary. Gill is “quite often right about restaurants”, notes Coren, and “by far most entertaining of the older generation of critics”. So they go back, together. “For a double check.”
• Tracey MacLeod (5th August 2008)
  Food 3/5, Ambience 3/5, Service 4/5
  
  “At Hélène Darroze's new restaurant at The Connaught”, fumes the critic, “the service isn't just there to, well, serve. It appears to be the whole point of the evening”. With a start like that, you sort of know this isn’t going to be a great review, and so it turns out. She notes that the French are now in charge here again, and “boy, are they keen to let you know it”. It transpires that there‘s a bit of ‘previous’ here: the critic “reviewed [Darroze’s] restaurant in Paris soon after her Michelin promotion in 2003 and was disappointed by chaotic service and inconsistent food”.
• AA Gill (5th August 2008)
  4/5 stars
  
  “The walls are dark, the lights turgid, the staff legion”, notes the critic, setting the scene at this Mayfair dining room, and the “chairs that are too heavy for a single human to move”. Like the Indie’s critic, he finds the staff too often interrupt. He uniformly likes the food, though. “This sort of food is all about the infinite improvements of scale, about the minute differences between things that most of us spend most of our lives saying, ‘Oh, I can’t be bothered’, or ‘That’ll do’… [T]he food, for the most part, is accomplished, crafted to an exacting standard, using ingredients of a quality and finesse you rarely find outside of kitchens where price is never going to be a criterion.”
• Guy Dimond (31st July 2008)
  5/6 stars
  
  Our hero finds himself among the aliens! He has to eat surrounded by people who “clearly think nothing of spending three figures on dinner. Each.” Clearly not natural TO territory at all. But he is both undaunted and impressed. “Now, after months of French polishing, some new fabrics and some stunning new tableware, The Connaught’s historic dining room has now been reinvented with the arrival of Hélène Darroze… and her team [who] have brought not only culinary verve, but real personality to The Connaught for the first time in years.” “[I]t ain’t cheap, but you definitely get what you pay for here.”
• Fay Maschler (24th July 2008)
  3/5 stars
  
  The doyenne of critics damns the latest Mayfair arrival from the City of Light with something approaching faint praise. “Unlike in most temples of haute cuisine”, she notes “a pronounced regional bias” on the menu. “Where it comes undone is where it clashes with the distortion that the pursuit and capture of Michelin stars imposes on a meal.” No surprise then that the approach can end up seeming “egregiously elaborate (and expensive)”.
• Richard Vines (24th July 2008)
  3/4 stars
  
  The critic has a perfectly fine meal. Even though he writes for a financial news service, however, and is relatively cost-insensitive, he concludes that the prices are notably more spectacular than the cooking.
• Andy Hayler (24th July 2008)
  8/10
  
  Is there a cultural difference going on here? Andy Hayler has eaten in almost all of the top restaurants in France, so is an honorary Frenchman to some extent, and he’s very up on the Connaught’s newcomer. (He was pretty up on the recently-opened Ambassade de L’Ile, too – to an extent which has not shared by most of the critics who are ‘professionals’ in the more technical sense.)
• Jasper Gerard (22nd July 2008)
  9/10
  
  In sharp contrast to his Telegraph stablemate Jan Moir – who wrote the restaurant column for many years, but now self-publishes at areyoureadytoorder.co.uk – Mr Gerard really takes to the re-launch of Angela Hartnett’s former perch, at the Connaught, by a starry lady chef from Paris.
• Jan Moir (17th July 2008)
  
  Oh dear, you know from the start this isn’t going to be good. The critic asks for a modestly priced half-bottle of wine. “Hmmmm. Tssssk. Cough, cough, cough. Ahem. The sommelier pats the wine list in a regretful manner as if it is a pet poodle that has just soiled the silk carpet. His smile is as thin as a shoelace.” We are, of course, in “the famous, wood-panelled dining room” of a recently-renovated Mayfair hotel where a “celebrated new chef has been installed”, and expectations are high.
• (3rd June 2008)
  
  In a long piece (not a review), the Indie’s man considers “Why Helene Darroze is set to become Britain's leading female chef”. A brave prognostication. If he’s right, the home-grown girls – such as Angela Hartnett, and Clare Smyth (at Gordon Ramsay) – aren’t going to like it one little bit.