Afternoon Tea at Claridge's, Mayfair

For a long time, I dismissed afternoon tea as a twee, anachronistic routine laid on purely for day-trippers and tourists. I was in no rush to drop half a ton on some cold sandwiches and cakes, and I saw little to recommend spending an afternoon in a stuffy hotel foyer surrounded by loud Texans in ill-fitting house jackets. Real Londoners, I thought, should avoid it in the same way we'd avoid the changing of the guard or Portobello Road on Saturdays - let's leave afternoon tea for the tourists, and cut our own crusts off some Boots Meal Deal sandwiches if we felt so inclined and head down the pub.

In most cases, too, I still think I'm right - there are way too many places doing this kind of thing pretty half-heartedly (think bought-in sandwiches and cakes and packet jams) just so some timid out-of-towners can tick it off their "things to do" list, and none of them are cheap. They all suffer from that depressingly common affliction of anywhere popular with tourists - like Leicester Square restaurants and Madame Tussaud's, if you're going to be full anyway, why bother being good?

So it's all the more impressive that despite all the reverse-snobbery and emotional baggage I took with me to Claridge's of a Sunday afternoon for a friend's birthday, I managed not only to enjoy a few hours of the most wonderful gastronomic theatre, but left with my mind completely changed about the ceremony of afternoon tea itself.

That ceremony begins the moment you step through the handsome revolving door from Brook Street, onto the gleaming black and white marble floor, and up to the twinkly foyer restaurant. It's a building to take your breath away - luxurious, certainly, but refined and elegant in a way that nowhere else could dream of matching. Not even its closest rivals, the Dorchester or the Connaught or (arguably) the Savoy can manage this kind of effortless, stately glamour; even the odd modernist touches, such as the vast Dale Chihuly glass chandelier coiling out from the middle of the foyer ceiling, only seem to compliment the art deco twirls and flourishes and the floor-to-ceiling mirrors. The word "timeless" almost only tells half the story - Claridge's seems to exist in an entire enchanting, glittering dimension of its own.

In this room, in this hotel, attention to detail is everything. And so, with the arrival of crustless finger sandwiches on a classic Limousin porcelain, anything even slightly out of place would have raised a (polite, gently disapproving) eyebrow. But the sandwiches were seemingly cut with a razor blade and ruler in immaculate rows, accompanied by delicate gougeres which dissolved into cheesy savouriness the second they hit the tongue. Sandwich flavours were traditional, but with the occasional unexpected twist. Smoked salmon, for example, was pressed not next to normal dairy but "shrimp butter" and samphire, adding an extra seafoody dimension, and roast chicken tasted of the highest quality bird and a mysterious note of tarragon.

Once the savouries had disappeared, they were replaced (gracefully, almost invisibly) with mini scones, home made jam and quite honestly the best clotted cream I've ever tasted in my life. Dense without being cloying, tasting of farm-freshness and as bright as the driven snow, it was magical stuff, and we still talk about it. It would almost - no, it would, definitely - be worth going back just for that.

And nothing so simple as "cakes" to follow the scones, either. No, instead here are four examples of the finest French patisserie, including a cherry cake with a handsome flourish of carved chocolate on top, an eclair with a gentle pear flavour, and a kind of blackcurrant medallion with an elaborate topping of soft meringue. Again, not a berry, base or button out of place. Some of us couldn't finish them (not me of course, but I was sure to cast a disapproving glance at those in question), and they were boxed up and tied with ribbons to take home.

Teas are by expert tea-lady Henrietta Lovell, the house champagne is Laurent Perrier (of which we took full advantage), and on the way out you're encouraged to fill your own bags of Victoriana confectionary for the journey home. Everything gleams with care and attention; you can't - you literally are unable to - fault any of it, from start to finish.

Well, almost everything. For as much fun and joy as afternoon tea at Claridge's undoubtedly is, blimey do you pay for it. The advertised £50 a head is just the start - with service, champagne and God knows what else (I don't think they even include tax as part of the inital £50 but I could be wrong, annoyingly I forgot to take a picture of the bill) you'll probably not get away with much less than £80 per person. And I'm not so much of a hopeless Claridge's fan to understand that is way, way more than what most people want or are able to spend on tea and cakes.

But what tea and cakes. And yes it's a lot of money but I honestly enjoyed this more than I've enjoyed many £80 dinners at restaurants elsewhere. The cliché about afternoon tea is that the sandwiches and cakes aren't really the point, that it's more about the formalities and traditions and stealing glances at old Mayfair ladies with big hair than the food. This, in many lesser places, is certainly true. But along with all that, serenaded by piano and cello and in the most beautiful dining room in London, at Claridge's you also get food and drink of purest gold. Surely that's worth paying for, once in a while?

Thanks Hannah and Alison for some photos.

9/10

The Kitchen Table at Bubbledogs&, Fitzrovia

From the moment it was announced that husband and wife team Sandia Chang and James Knappett, ex of Per Se, the Ledbury, Roganic and you-name-it of world-class restaurants here and abroad, were opening their own place, the buzz was deafening. When it was further announced that their first collaboration was to be a small bar in Fitzrovia specialising in hot dogs and champagne, well, some anticipation turned to chuckles.

I loved Bubbledogs. It was - still very much is - a serious cocktail bar that cleverly matches what, for the want of a better description, I'll call "gourmet fast food" with a brilliant selection of grower champagnes and a smart front of house team that never put a foot wrong. It was ludicrously busy from the day it opened in the way these places often are, but there are very few people who ever braved the queues and got a table that would have cause to complain. Tasty food, great atmosphere, and friendly service; a perfect neighbourhood bar.

Ah, but - the story went - the best was yet to come. Behind thick leather curtains at the back of Bubbledogs was to be Kitchen Table - chef James' pride and joy, a gleaming Rolls-Royce of an open kitchen surrounded by just 19 seats, where lucky diners would watch in awe as a 13-course tasting menu was prepared in front of their eyes, each dish presented by the chef who designed, sourced the ingredients and cooked it. A foodie and chef-groupie utopia, a personal chef "experience" that laid raw the creative process of cooking and represented the very pinnacle of achievement in modern British cooking. I was certain I'd love every minute of it.

And don't get me wrong, the food was frequently astonishing, as accomplished as you might expect from a chef with Knappett's pedigree and as good an advertisement for London's place at the top of the food tree as you could possibly imagine. And if it wasn't for a few bizarre minutes halfway through the evening, I would have skipped out of Kitchen Table singing its praises as much as every other Tom, Dick and Marina that's set foot there. But I'm afraid, in the end, my memories of that evening aren't as golden as I was hoping they'd be.

We can start in happier times, though. First course of raw razor clams, cucumber, horseradish and mint was very like something you might be presented at the start of a Ledbury tasting menu - fantastic fresh seafood, lifted by just the right mix of aromatic herbs but still tasting unapologetically of the main ingredient. Loved the presentation, loved the showmanship - a great start.

Sea bass was a cured, largely raw piece of fish with a skin that had been blowtorched over 'wood coal', which as far as I can gather is a state of being somewhere between wood and coal. The smell as these things were being prepared was amazing, like a log fire in a fisherman's cottage, and though the texture was unexpected - chewy rather than flaky - the extra bite just meant the flavours lasted longer in the mouth. That on top by the way is fennel marmalade - a masterful accompaniment.

The next course was chicken skin, rosemary mascarpone and bacon jam. Do you think anyone in the history of the world has never not enjoyed chicken skin, mascarpone and bacon jam? No. I wasn't about to be the first.

"Kale" was a clever thing, a parmesan-soaked sponge of raw kale, topped with flakes of pickled radish. When you bit into a particularly spongy bit of kale the sauce burst out like a kind of inside-out Caesar salad, smooth and salty and fresh.

Perhaps my favourite course of all, "Cod" contained the most perfect gyoza-like gnocchi dressed in cod's roe, topped with fresh shaved chestnuts. There wasn't much more to it than that, but it was crunchy, salty, rich and umami in all the right places and an absolute delight.

Then, just as the second glass of bubbly was having its desired effect and it looked like this was shaping up to be one of the most enjoyable evenings in a long time, it all went a bit wrong. Not with the food - that continued in a similar stellar vein - but with the atmosphere in the room. Halfway through my cod course I looked up and saw Knappett's face twisted into something halfway between anger and agony. I have no idea what had happened - as I say you wouldn't have known anything was amiss from what was presented to us to eat - but from the obscenities shot at his sous chefs to the way he was suddenly throwing plates and pans around, he was clearly not a happy man. In fact, he looked furious, the kind of rage I'd only previously seen from a man dressed in chef's whites on TV in a programme involving Gordon Ramsay, and the reaction from all around him was immediate - the waiters racing around wide-eyed, the juniors in whites chopping and slicing and prepping in an even more terrified and frantic fashion.

I looked around in astonishment to see if anyone else had noticed what was going on. On the face of it, they hadn't - people were chatting and enjoying their meals in much the same way as before, but then actually very soon, so was I - in the face of such an abrupt change of attitude, your first reaction is to pretend nothing's happening and hope it blows over, in case acknowledgement of the issue makes things worse. Even when one poor member of serving staff got called a "lazy c**t" (I don't think I'm paraphrasing) over the shoulder of a bemused Australian diner, nobody reacted. Could this be the kind of thing people were expecting?

Well, I wasn't, and I didn't like it. Call me a big old softie but I shrink when people lose their temper in any situation, never mind one in which everyone is taking part in the same interactive dinner, and I found the whole thing excruciatingly embarrassing. In a few minutes Knappett had gathered himself together enough to introduce the next course but by then the damage was done and I can't say I really found my appetite again. Which is a shame - for everyone - because food as good as this deserves an atmosphere suitable to enjoy it in, and front of house staff as good as those at Kitchen Table deserve to not have their efforts overshadowed by a head chef with a short temper.

So, in a thin semblance of normality, the evening continued. The calcots and cod dish, seemingly the cause of a kitchen meltdown, was wonderful - flaky cod fillet, smoky veg and a wonderful sharp homemade romesco sauce studded with toasted almonds.

Sous-vide mallard with blood orange and chard wasn't my companion's favourite dish but I am yet to not enjoy wild duck and thought the orange and olive combination, while definitely experimental, not wholly unpleasant.

Roebuck venison, served with roast cauliflower and damson yoghurt, was just about the best bit of bambi I've ever eaten - so full of flavour despite (we were told) not being hung at all, tender and fresh rather than gamey and bitter.

More venison came in the form of ragu under house pasta and smoked egg yolk, topped with panko breadcrumbs and tarragon. Again, lovely.

And a cheese course was a blob of unpasteurised Stichelton with some dainty curls of champagne-compressed apple.

Desserts, if not as wildly successful as those that had come before, still spoke of real skill. Alphonso mango purée (frozen when they were in season, they were careful to point out) and yoghurt ice cream was like a posh Solero (in a good way), lemon and cream cheese curd even survived the addition of beetroot ice cream (something I'd previously vowed to hate forever more) and finally a rhubarb "Tunnock's tea cake" was a clever and powerfully-flavoured last bite that contained a great mix of soft and crisp textures.

But what to make of it all? Perhaps much of my discomfort is a personal thing, and the more emotionally grounded amongst you could have shrugged off the Incident as just one of those things that must happen from time to time in any professional kitchen. It would be naive to think they don't happen, in fact, in restaurants all over the world every hour of service. But my point is, I'm not that naive. I know these things happen. I just don't want to see it. And even if you are the kind of person who can happily sit through the sight of a chef/owner striking the fear of God into all around him, only a real sadist would enjoy watching sous chefs and sommeliers desperately trying to do their job and pretend all's well while all hell breaks loose behind them.

And even if this was a complete one-off, and normally Knappett is as level-headed and composed as Mahatma Gandhi on a spa break, the Incident still made me question the whole logic of having the process of preparing food so nakedly on display. Is not some of the joy of eating stunning fine-dining like this the mystique of not knowing exactly how the magic happens?

There's a fine tradition of open kitchen bars in Japan, for sushi and yakitori amongst many others, but these are much different beasts - the sushi master will just press a piece of raw fish around some warm rice and it's done, or place some skewers of marinaded chicken over charcoal as needed - actions calculated to be part of the presentation rather than part of the preparation. Watching a poor junior chef, towards the end of a 12-hour day, desperately shaving as much raw chestnut into a bowl as possible without slicing his fingers off is not fun, or educational. It's just cruel. And had I been shielded from all that, the tantrums and the terror and the toil, I would have enjoyed my dinner infinitely more.

But here we are. And though I didn't enjoy my evening at Kitchen Table as much as I'd hoped, there is still the unavoidable fact that the food is some of the best you can find in town. If I'm the only person to ever catch them on a bad night, then consider the above nothing more than an anomaly, an excuse to pontificate grandly on the whole logic of open kitchens and, all said and done, a report of what I had for dinner one day. By all means, go, eat and drink and be merry, you'll probably love it. But I think I may just lean towards an "ignorance is bliss" perspective from now on - when it comes to eating out, too much reality is rarely a good thing.

6/10

EDIT 2: I've received a response from James that stands in such contrast to the usual cheffy posturing on Twitter I hope he won't mind if I publish it here:

@chrispople @marinaoloughlin I don't find this as bad news,like all the chefs I have worked for the passion to our food can run high at

— James Knappett (@jamesknappett) January 25, 2013

@chrispople @marinaoloughlin times every thing has to be right and at times they r not so tempers rise, to us this is care

— James Knappett (@jamesknappett) January 25, 2013

@chrispople @marinaoloughlin But no excuse for guests to c that so I'd like to apologises for offence caused and did not intend this at all

— James Knappett (@jamesknappett) January 25, 2013

EDIT: Forgot prices. The menu is £68/head and bottles of champagne start around £35 ish. We paid £108/head all in with drinks & service.

Bubbledogs&, Fitzrovia

I was unsure whether to write anything about Bubbledogs&. Firstly, I completely forgot to take photos so all I have to remind me of the wonderful few hours I spent on Charlotte Street last night is one grainy shot of a table groaning with hot dogs and cocktails. True, nobody ever came here for world-class food photography, but an interior as impressive as this deserves as much exposure as possible. Secondly though, and more importantly, lavishing yet more gushing praise on a place that has already, despite having only just opened, received more gushing praise than almost anywhere else in the capital, seems rather pointless. There's probably nothing that hasn't already been said - Bubbledogs& is great, and you'll love it, and you should go. End of story.

But here we are anyway, and although I'll still keep it brief, the scale of husband-and-wife team Sandia Chang and James Knappett's achievement in making a roaring success out of this most unusual of concepts deserves just a bit more praise. The truth is, I was far more looking forward to the opening of Knappett's Kitchen Table (the & of the Bubbledogs&), a 16-seater fine-dining project hidden behind curtains at the back of the main bar, than the bit involving sausages and fizz. I assumed the rest of it was just a gimmick, a headline-grabbing advertisement for the fine-dining real deal to follow, and though I was reasonably sure I'd enjoy eating hot dogs and drinking champagne (being both human and not dead), I wasn't expecting fireworks.

I also wasn't expecting the Bubbledogs& bar area to be quite so beautiful. Exposed brick walls and hanging light bulbs are hardly new in 2012 restaurant design, but wooden panels and dinky little mirror "windows" give the place a sort of log cabin feel, and a gleaming copper-plated bar at one end of the room wouldn't be out of place in any top London hotel. Downstairs, the walls of the bathroom area are plastered quite brilliantly in menus from restaurants all over London and the world - collected personally by James and Sandia I was told. I hardly ever mention décor as it takes quite a bit from anything to distract me from what's on my plate, but this place really does look good.

And we've all had hot dogs before but the range of toppings Bubbledogs has put together are mini masterpieces in fast food for £6 a pop. The Buffalo Dog was a clever rearrangement of Buffalo Chicken Wings into hot dog form, with Frank's hot sauce underneath and a topping of blue cheese and celery. The K-Dog came topped with a generous mound of spicy, zingy kimchee, and the José with guacamole, sour cream, salsa and fiery jalapenos. And if you think the poor pig itself would be lost under this barrage of toppings, think again - it was always the dominant flavour thanks to incredibly good sausage meat, certainly on a par with those from Big Apple Hot Dogs if not (whisper it) perhaps even better.

Sides were just as luridly addictive. North Americans will be more familiar with "tater tots", sort of mini hash browns fashioned into dinky little cylinders, than a native Brit but I'm sure they'll find an appreciative audience here. They went particularly well dipped in "Cheese Whiz", best described as a salty neon-yellow custard, like the kind you get with nachos at a multiplex cinema. It bears as close a resemblance to cheese as a pack of Quavers does to a truckle of aged Comté, but what the hell, I loved it anyway.

As with anywhere charging not very much for great food, Bubbledogs& is likely to be hugely oversubscribed. I believe the current queuing system is similar to Burger & Lobster - you put your name down and kill time nearby waiting for a call rather than line up outside - but this may change depending on how well it works long term. The worry I have is that the room and atmosphere and service is just so lovely that people will be tempted to linger and thus make the queues even more terrifying, but that's still not going to stop me trying. And in fact, they'll even save you a table if you book in groups of six, so maybe just grab a few friends together. And if you can't immediately find six friends? I imagine having a table booked at Bubbledogs& is the perfect way to make some new ones.

9/10

For photos that are far better than I could have come up with even if I had remembered to take any, try The Skinny Bib

Pauillac lamb at Galvin @ Windows

There are some invitations that however high-minded or ethically sensitive you consider yourself as a blogger, you do not turn down. A multiple steak tasting at Hawksmoor, a Brindisa ham carving school and any number of lavish Bibendum sponsored wine events certainly qualify for an immediate "yes", and have subsequently turned out to be every bit as fun as they promised. And so last week when Fred Sirieix, restaurant manager at Galvin @ Windows (Hilton Park Lane), attention drawn presumably by a couple of (completely un-sponsored, I might add) glowing reviews on these pages over the last couple of years, invited me and a couple of lucky others to try some special Pauillac salt marsh lamb that André Garret (head chef) had managed to get hold of, my response was a foregone conclusion.


And speaking of ethical dilemmas, the consumption of suckling lamb is itself a bit of a tricky one. This is, after all, very young lamb, torn away from its mothers teat and mercilessly slaughtered barely before it's had a chance to take its first steps, with a subtle, sweet flavour and meltingly soft pink flesh. I had tried suckling lamb once before, from a tiny little restaurant in Paris called La Cerisaie, and the tender rich flavour of my own slow-braised shoulder in a rich jus took me right back to that meal all those years ago. And although the focus of the evening was the lamb, I should also mention my starter of "salad of salsify & heritage carrots, deep fried duck egg and truffle cream", which was nigh-on-perfect.



Towards the end of the meal Fred, presumably deciding that serving the worlds most exclusive lamb wasn't quite enough of a highlight for one evening, flourished a bottle of Armand de Brignac rosé champagne. This ludicrous bottle of bubbly, its gleaming packaging as flamboyantly flashy as some of its most notable customers (Jay Z is apparently a fan), is sold by the bottle at Galvin for about £600, and here we were knocking it back like it was Ribena. For the record, it was very nice, but am I too much of a pleb for much preferring the vanilla-y, rich Pommery Brut NV we had as an aperitif? Probably I am.


The Pauillac suckling lamb will be on the menu at Galvin @ Windows until the end of January, and as well as the braised shoulder is available as an assiette. The evening dinner menu is £58 and comes highly recommended.

Many thanks to Hollow Legs for letting me nick her photos, battling hardly favourable lighting conditions