A German chef with a high reputation – mainly forged in Italy – is to take over the main dining room at London’s Lanesborough hotel, reports caterersearch.com.
Since its opening back in the ’90s, the Hyde Park Corner hotel – one of the most expensive in town – has never sustained a convincing top-end restaurant, so the news of Heinz Beck’s arrival represents something of a triumph of hope over experience.
The hotel’s most recent attempt at fine dining, Apsleys – ostentatiously fitted out by star American designer Adam Tihany – has been without a head chef since last autumn.
Beck has been chef at Rome’s famous Cavalieri Hilton since 1994. Catersearch remarks that his “light cuisine of Mediterranean flavours” has seen him compared with Ferran Adrià (of El Bulli) and big-name Parisian chef Pierre Gagnaire.
The success of the new venture, to open next month, can hardly be said to be assured. The space (120 seats) is very large for a top-flight operation, and the precedent of the most recent top German chef in town is hardly encouraging: Andaman By Dieter Müller, at the St. James's Hotel & Club, had closed even before many foodies were really aware that it was open.
Furthermore, it is implied that the London restaurant will be run in tandem with Beck’s existing Rome tenure: whatever the Michelin publicity-machine would have you believe, such multiple tenures rarely seem to be conducive to the achievement of the best results, in London anyway.
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