A steakhouse on a scale of which Uncle Sam would approve, and offering good American steaks; Mayfair’s answer to Peter Luger’s, however, this is not.
Imagine some sort of TGIF without the charm, and worse Muzak, and you begin to approach the style-horror of the new dining room of this supposedly five-star hotel.
Then gross up the scale of your imagining. This is one of the few dining rooms in London which can simply be described as ‘too large’, which is presumably one of the reasons restaurants on the site (most recently Bord’Eaux) usually don’t last very long.
Then add service of comedic genius. We have never before had a waitress who performs her entire marketing spiel entirely oblivious to the fact that all four diners at the table were completely engrossed in conversation at the beginning of the attempted interruption. And at the end too.
It went without saying that the food would be vile, but sadly it was not. The house-speciality steaks – USDA, blah, blah – were pronounced excellent by all who sampled them, and the fish and chips were very good too. Incidentals weren’t bad either.
What’s clear however is that any economies of running a dining room on an ocean-liner scale are not being passed on to the customer; prices are chilling.
One can understand that steak is expensive, but everything here comes at continental-scale prices (even at lunch). Our one-course meal for four, with two drinks (for the entire table) and a few incidentals was almost £40 a head, and, at dinner, getting past £100-a-head would be a breeze.
Only the most determined carnivore could possibly think it was worth it.
