Mr Creosote’s Reviews

Far and away the best of the recent crop of Szechuan restaurants in London. Terrific food that has a subtlety some Szechuan joints can lack, but bear in mind that the ground-floor dining room you can see from the street is a much more attractive space than the rather gloomy upstairs dining room. Service was a little careless – the waitress sloshed water all over the table without noticing – and food arrived all in one go rather than as starters and mains, which always feels like a way to please the kitchen rather than the customer.

At Helene Darroze, petits fours are served atop little towers constructed from dark chocolate – which, it turns out, are merely decorative and not designed to be eaten. Of course, there are plenty of chefs in London who unintentionally make something perfectly edible into something completely inedible. But when half the world is starving, is there not something a little obscene about a restaurant that *deliberately* makes food you can’t eat? Come to think of it, why was this hotel even re-furbished? It used to be the last place in London you could find top-drawer, old-world English charm, now it looks like every other five-star that happens to have a bit of history. Great bars, though.

Despite the best efforts of the designers and the option of arriving via a lift through a separate entrance, there’s no escaping the feeling that you’re eating in a shopping centre at Le Café Anglais (a fact not helped by the dining room’s vastness, which somehow recalls a very posh version of the food courts you find in American malls). The straight-up and simple food hits the spot and there are some interesting wines (there’s an ace Riesling Grand Cru from Alsace that’s a great match for the roast chicken), but sadly it’s amateur hour on the service front, with difficulties encountered at the reception desk and repeated requests for drinks going unheeded. If I lived in west London I’d be happy to have this on my doorstep, but it's not really worth the journey to Queensway otherwise.

Came here for Sunday dinner on one of the rare evenings in summer when it wasn't raining. The huge garden makes this place understandably very, very busy when the sun's shining, but that's no reason for the staff's graceless attitude towards customers: it's not called 'the hospitality industry' for nothing and you're supposed to be friendly and welcoming to the people who have come to your establishment looking to be fed and watered. A pity, because the wood-panelled, olde-worlde pub inside looked like somewhere lovely to hide away in winter, but I won't be going be back.

Pretty room, but stuffed full of suits. Staff very professional but very robotic: smile more, guys! Good for client entertaining but very 'Ramsay': you feel like you could be eating in any of the big man's restaurants.