“You don’t ever forget a date at the Ritz!”; if you’re looking for a “great place for a celebration”, especially of a “romantic” nature, this “incomparable” Louis XVI chamber is a total “wow”, and nowadays the food – traditionally lacklustre – almost lives up!
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“A grand hotel should offer a very particular kind of gastronomy”, says the critic. “It must honour the special occasion, reward the financially reckless, soothe the resident, gratify the regular. It needs to have a different quality to just haute cuisine and achieve the seemingly impossible combination of timelessness and thrill. Since chef Michel Bourdin left The Connaught, no London hotel has delivered it.” Ah, how true! And only too continuingly true of her visit to this famously pretty Piccadilly dining room, where her food was pretty consistently devoid of any sort of excitement. (Some people, incidentally, have been telling us for years that the food at the Ritz is ‘getting better’ – it has never, ever been true.)
Giles Coren (3rd June 2008)
6/10
We’ve been following the Ritz restaurant for nearly 20 years, and people are perenially proclaiming that the cooking is – finally – living up to the room. Thus, The Times’s man finds himself going to check out their new spring menu, which “everyone is raving about”. Needless to say it turns out that this is Yet Another False Dawn.
Fay Maschler (7th January 2010)
Giles Coren (3rd June 2008)
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