The new Claridge’s Restaurant needed to be visited at some point, because the hotel is a London institution. Always the same but, oddly, always evolving, too – I’ve been treating myself here for at least 25 years. Claridge’s is the doyenne of classy, pricey metropolitan hotels. It is Audrey Hepburn eating a caviar blini while wearing a tiara, with crunchily expensive carpets, top-hatted doormen and a delightful art deco ladies’ bathroom. Post-pee, an attendant beckons you to a mirrored dressing table to powder your nose.
All this bling remains constant, but in other ways Claridge’s isn’t afraid to change, particularly in its main dining room, where in recent years it’s said hello and goodbye to Simon Rogan’s esoteric food journey at Fera, followed by a warm embrace for Daniel Humm’s Davies and Brook, a sibling to New York’s Eleven Madison Park, although he, too, packed his cases pretty quickly. Creative differences, they said: Humm wanted to turn the whole menu vegan, and Claridge’s didn’t share his vision for multiple courses of petals, flora and parsnip shavings.
