The Times
Camilla Long felt she had entered a “seductive, soothing, expensive, smoothly grinning money machine” as she was ushered into this grand art deco hotel dining room after what seems like its tenth relaunch since the departure of Gordon Ramsay – this time as an outpost of an Italianate café from Greenwich Village in New York.
The staff were ultra-solicitous, the senior ones “dressed like psychiatric hospital attendants, in high necks and long white Handmaid’s Tale sleeves”, creating an overall vibe Camilla summed up as “diminished responsibility”. Fittingly, the menu “feels as though it’s been decided by management consultants with degrees in psychology”.
As to the food, two dishes were “revelatory”: caviar tartlets and grilled chicken ‘alla diavola’, although the latter was “about as diavola as Kate Middleton’s hat drawer”, while the prawn cocktail tasted oddly sweet, as did the premixed martinis. But the real offence was the bill: Camilla reckoned almost £500 was a lot to pay for three people eating chicken, burger, Dover sole, some starters and drinks in a “clattery” place “among Americans whom the hotel only considers desirable because at least they aren’t Middle Easterners”.
Camilla Long - 2026-06-21
