The Lanesborough Grill, Belgravia

One of the side effects of writing a restaurant blog for as long as I have, aside from an ever-increasing waistline, is that you often end up revisiting the same sites as they go through various different incarnations. I first visited the grand dining hall of the Lanesborough hotel all the way back in 2011 when it went by the name Apsley's and was serving (despite the very English name) a pricey - even for 2011 - menu of Italian fine dining. I remember one of the starters arriving on nine separate plates, but not much else, which probably tells you everything you need to know.

After that it became Celeste, where the vast space became increasingly untroubled by customers and earned the nickname Marie Celeste. I remember being one of two tables taken on a Saturday lunchtime, eating another fairly unmemorable lunch of posh Italian dishes. Celeste wasn't a bad restaurant as such, and it is certainly true that finding the right kind of operation to sit comfortably in a 5-star hotel is no easy task, but I don't think I've ever really been delighted to pay over £30 for a plate of pasta regardless of how plush the carpets are.

Anyway it's third time lucky for the Lanesborough - at least I imagine they hope it is - with their flagship restaurant now being called the Lanesborough Grill. As the name suggests, the new menu has much more in common with the grand old tradition of London hotel restaurants (think the Dorchester or the Ritz) than the pretensions of Italian fine dining, and although it's certainly not cheap, starters of £20-ish and mains of £40-ish mean that your final bill will be less disastrous than if you had the full Antipasti - Primi - Secondi - Dulci palava.

The house bread at the Lanesborough is extremely good, a quartered sourdough bun served with a generous puck of salted butter. It's details like this that separate the good from the best of fine dining kitchens, and while the ability to bake bread this good may be increasingly common it's never a trivial thing to achieve.

Octopus was very nicely grilled, with crispy bits of charred tentacle contrasting nicely with the meaty, tender flesh inside. The seafood came arranged inside a kind of chunky salad of Jersey potatoes and sea kale, a remarkably successful pairing. Best of all though was a white almond 'gazpacho' serving as a sauce, bringing a touch of Mediterranean flair to the plate.

Orkney scallop was, in its favour, vast - a ludicrously outsized example whose shell must have been the size of a kitchen table. I still maintain that a cooked scallop is generally nicer to eat than raw, and this was very much raw, dressed simply in tomato and rapeseed oil, but it was clearly an excellent specimen and they'd obviously decided to mess about with it too much would have a detrimental effect. Not my dish, but I didn't hear any complaints.

Next a little interstatial course of buttermilk-fried quail, the coating puffed up with I think rice or oats to great effect. It came on a bed of mushrooms and spring onions and one of those lovely dark green vegetal oils, and was a lovely, earthy counterpoint to the quail.

We hardly needed any more carbs given the main course was going to be a giant pie, but I was intrigued by the idea of hash browns with cheese and so wanted to see what would turn up. These neat little cubes of fried potato had a lovely crunch but added to the usual diced potato filling was a delirious slick of melted goat's cheese, an idea so simple and yet so good I'm surprised I've not stumbled upon it before.

But yes if a menu contains beef Wellington, I'm going to need a very good reason not to order it, and so with no such reasons obvious, order it I did. Presented whole and sliced theatrically tableside, it was an extremely good example of its kind, with beef cooked to medium rare, and a pastry casing not too think or soggy. The sauce was a lovely salty, glossy creation that tasted like it had taken someone a good deal of time and care to get right, and with the Wellington itself came a nice meaty slice of hen-of-the-woods mushroom, another thing I always look for on menus when the season's right. As a nicely generous touch they left us the largely meat-free 'ends' of the Wellingdon, but by this point thanks to over-feeding on that excellent bread and the irresistable cheesey hash browns, we were in no position to make any use of them. Still, nice touch.

Desserts were geometrically beautiful and enormous fun to eat, in the finest London 5-star hotel restaurant tradition. Glazed caramel white chocolate with Poire William was every bit as good as that sounds, with some excellent texture contrasts. And a little brioche pudding flavoured with "burnt orange purée" was also superb, its "milk ice cream" rich and smooth and buttery.

As I mention above, I was no fan of Apsley's or Celeste and accepted an invite to the latest incarnation more in hope than expectation. But the new "posh British" menu sits far, far better in this lovely room than the fussy, faintly pretentious Italian concept it replaces. No, it's not quite the Ritz, but then where is - I enjoyed my meal here far more than for example the Foyer restaurant at Claridge's which is probably its closest competitor. Sometimes, you just want to sit down in gloriously upholstered surroundings and order three courses of skilful, attractive takes on the classics, which is exactly what the Lanesborough Grill delivers in spades. Let's hope this version finds an audience and outlasts both of its predecessors and more.

8/10

I was invited to the Lanesborough Grill and didn't see a bill. Expect to pay about £100/head with a couple of glasses of wine.

Tartufo, Belgravia

As much as I enjoy squeezing onto the end of a hard wooden bench eating food off a paper plate - and I do enjoy this very much, otherwise I wouldn't get much out of the very excellent Kerb streetfood events - occasionally it is nice to be pampered. Pampered with soft carpets, white tablecloths, white hand towels in the bathrooms, napkins that are magically folded the moment you step up from your table, and a lighting scheme that makes everyone and everything glow with celestial light. And also, it goes without saying, sparkling service and the kind of food that wants to make you pitch up and stay the night. That kind of pampered.

The trick is finding a restaurant that has the whole package, as in, all the trimmings of fine dinings but also fantastic food worth the price being asked for it. There are plenty of chic, celebrity-soaked haunts in Kensington and Knightsbridge that have some of the above - I'm thinking particularly of Cassis, an artfully-designed space on the Brompton Road that is very impressive until you try to eat anything, or The Collection, mercifully trading no longer, whose vast black marble bar and mezzanine dining room compensated for overpriced, oversalted pub grub.

But to have plush décor, world-class service, great food and a bill that doesn't threaten to reacquaint you with your meal as soon as you set eyes on it, that is a rare thing indeed. So thank the dining gods (and one in particular, Alexis Gauthier) for Tartufo, a basement restaurant just off Sloane Square which is so utterly charming in almost every respect that it's like being hugged by a giant, white-linen-wrapped old friend.

A meal like this starts, not with the first bite, but with a greeting, and in that respect Tartufo are doing everything right. Staff are so well-drilled, pleasant and efficient that they could have all been working there for years, and yet astonishingly Tartufo is barely a few weeks old. I assume this, again, is the influence of mastership restaurant Gauthier which has very much had time to settle into its spot in Soho and from where presumably some of the team have graduated.

Better remember the dazzling greeting than the first bite, too, as unfortunately a mini cheese and tomato amuse was disconcertingly icy-fridge-fresh. We were the first people to sit down that evening, though, and a few minutes early at that, so perhaps we'd caught them unawares. And furthermore, from that point onwards, Tartufo hardly put a foot wrong.

"Kentish courgettes & peas" turned out to be a kind of vegetable barley risotto, and as anyone who's ever eaten at Gauthier will tell you, if there's one thing these guys can do it's a risotto. Fresh and summery, with a great big hit of fresh peas, this was a fine dish, and a very generous portion; it's a good job my friend had me to help her with it. I didn't hear any word of a thank-you though - so ungrateful some people.

Pasta dishes were even better. Wild rocket & lovage ravioli, despite possibly suffering from a few extra seconds in the pan than completely necessary, were dressed in one of those heavenly veal stock reductions that make me want to glance furtively around the room before mopping it up with my fingers. And just look at the truffle on the walnut and mascarpone tortelli - a generosity that belies the £10/course price point and then some. The smell, as you might imagine, was something else, and infused the dining room at various points in the evening as it arrived in front of other lucky customers.

The quality didn't let up much for the mains. Breast of guinea fowl had a perfectly moist flesh and a lovely crispy skin, and to that end they've already achieved more than 99% of places in town can manage. But add a bed of buttered kale, some silky girolles and another one of those stunning reduced sauces, and you have one of those plates of food you want to eat again and again.

Similarly, a generous number of sliced neck of lamb, pink inside with a good crust, rested on a bed of gently cheesy parmesan gratin, and alongside a cute little pot of garlic & parsley Jerseys. If I didn't know better I'd say they'd probably used the same thyme-infused veal jus as for the pasta dish, but picking apart a £10 dish of this quality seems deeply unfair. It was still licked clean.

"Dark chocolate crunch" is Tartufo's variation of the Gauthier/Roussillon/Alain Ducasse Louis XV dessert, and with a pedigree like this it couldn't go far wrong. The biscuit base a bit more firm than I'd like perhaps (requiring both arms to saw through it) but a lovely balanced flavour, and the accompanying lemon ice cream offset the main event perfectly. It was hard to capture on camera, but it was also topped with a spun-sugar "needle" that reached a good twelve inches into the air, which was great fun to snap apart and eat.

So, I'll say again, Tartufo is the complete package. Not only do you get all the pampering you might expect from the basement restaurant of a smart hotel in Belgravia, but the food is unpretentious and accessible whilst still being deeply impressive and, the real achievement in an area of town where it's still way too easy to make a living fleecing credulous Sloanes & celebs, remarkably good value. Next week there's every chance I'll be happily eating ribs off a paper plate on a wooden bench in Peckham. But whenever I feel the need for a bit of plush love, I'll be heading over to 11 Cadogan Gardens.

9/10

Apsley's, Belgravia

I have, I will admit, not been kind to the Lanesborough in the past. I had a very uncomfortable couple of hours one Saturday afternoon in the Library Bar, being ignored by waiters and being served overpriced mediocre martinis, and it was when I noticed that all the books in the "library" were fake that I decided that this probably wasn't the bar for me. But the fake books were almost a metaphor for the whole building - the Lanesborough is a brand-new London hotel masquerading as a grand-old London hotel (it only opened in 1990) and has created this atmosphere of stately longevity entirely out of nothing. Which is an achievement of sorts, I suppose.


There used to be a restaurant in the Lanesborough called The Conservatory, which many people thought was pretty nice even though it was a bit like eating in The Crystal Maze's Tropical Zone. The plants and flourishes have gone, replaced by cool beige carpets and chintzy sofas, and the new head chef is a chap called Nick Bell, who despite being as British as British can be is cooking "simple, regional, Italian food" (his words) amid the starched tablecloths and sommeliers.



First, the good. The room is grand and airy if only very slightly corporate-diner, and the staff are very, very good at what they do. We never had to ask for anything, they moved at just the right pace and our tapwaters were diligently refilled. My starter of "Lonza" ham (I had to ask) with onions and endive was perfectly good - the sharp endives balanced with the sweet pickled onions but allowing the smooth texture of the ham to show through. And a companion's "Cardoon" soup (a type of artichoke apparently) was declared "very nice", and came with a pesto made from thistle!



Mains were similarly tasty. I had a beautifully cooked piece of salmon with a lovely crispy skin, on top of a smooth, rich balsamic sauce. A great combination of textures and flavours that never overpowered the salmon. "Cotcechino" (it looked like a big meatball made from cured pork) was a robust plate of food and also disappeared without complaints. Desserts were less impressive - mine was a very simple orange sorbet and an iced chocolate sponge was only OK - but they didn't detract from what was in general an honest and flavoursome lunch. So, and I'm sure you've already skimmed down to the bottom of the page to check the score, why only 6/10?



Well, I blame the chef. Not because he can't cook, but because he himself admitted he's serving "simple, regional, Italian food". And if I want "simple, regional, Italian food" I won't go to a 5-star London hotel with white tablecloths, fish knives and more staff than customers. If I want "simple, regional, Italian food" I won't want to pay through the nose for it the most expensive city on earth. In short, if I want "simple, regional, Italian food" I will go to Italy. A quick search on Ryanair brings up a return to Rome (Ciampino) for the grand total (including taxes) of £44.01, just about the price I paid for my lunch at Apsley's. Nick Bell's dishes were authentic and tasty and I could recommend them wholeheartedly if they were not lost amidst the columns and shirt-tails of the Lanesborough - it just didn't sit right.


If Apsley's had gone down the Zafferano route of serving a haute-cuisine Italian-influenced menu, still sourcing the finest Italian produce but making the dishes look like they're worth the china they're served on, then that would have made sense. But the food at Apsley's doesn't step up to the mark demanded of a top London hotel restaurant and ultimately that is what people are shelling out for. I've had people try to convince me that it's the atmosphere and style that your money gets you at hotel restaurants, and that food is secondary. Well, if you are impressed enough by superficialities that you can overlook average food then good luck to you, but if Claridge's (Gordon Ramsay), the Mandarian (Foliage) and the Dorchester (The Grill Room) can host world-class restaurants that feel like they belong in such fine surroundings then I don't see why the Lanesborough can't.

6/10