Nick Bell, head chef of Apsley’s SW1 at the Lanesborough Hotel has left after just six months in the post, reports caterersearch.com. Bell’s departure follows hard on the announcement of the departure of the another major-luxury-league hotel chef, Aiden Byrne at the Dorchester, after a short stint.
Neither hotel’s restaurant has been crowned with great critical success. In fact, what the restaurants at both the Dorchester and the Lanesborough have most notably had in common in recent times is vast amounts of money thrown at ‘upgrades’ which have had little – or arguably negative - effect.
Which all begs the question of why so many of London’s top hotels continue to make such a hash of their restaurants. We recently noted what a particular mess the Dorchester has made, but it is far from alone in going backwards in recent times.
Gordon Ramsay’s involvement at Claridge’s and the Savoy (currently under refurbishment) has done nothing to improve those hotel’s restaurant operations (while robbing them of some of their former unique character). At the Connaught, the jury is still very much out on Hélène Darroze (who replaced Angela Hartnett after a not-so-hot Ramsay-group tenure, after the wanton destruction of the great French restaurant that had been there for nearly a century).
There are successes, of course: Marcus Wareing at the Berkeley SW1 and maze W1 are perhaps the leading examples (but it is perhaps no coincidence that both have their ‘own’ entrances. It’s the same at Locanda Locatelli W1, notionally attached to the Churchill, but generally perceived as entirely independent.)
Hotels such as the Mandarin Oriental and the Grosvenor House, however – which had three-Michelin-star restaurants back in the ’90s – have somewhat drifted off the map. Perhaps Richard Corrigan’s new venture at the latter – the intitial reviews of which are glowing – signals better times ahead?
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