Handsomely restored: the beautiful room is one of glistening marble, and fluted columns
(Picture: Matt Writtle)Is there a specific term for the emotions elicited by a grand, wholly pointless bit of dish presentation? An obscure German word, maybe, that perfectly encapsulates the ephemeral thrill and lasting confusion that generally accompanies smoke-filled cloches or flatbreads hanging from wrought-metal serving trees?
Well, whatever we call it, that was the precise sensation I felt at Dorothy and Marshall, a new all-day spot in deepest Bromley, as I looked up from my table to see the waitress approaching with my burger. Through the disintegrating bun, it was speared with a serrated knife so unnecessarily enormous she had to hold it in place with her free hand.Not long after, my eldest’s “kids’ burger” arrived with the same teetering, faintly lethal accessory acting as a kind of “My First Maiming” Happy Meal toy.
Obviously this is a minor detail from one isolated meal. But I mention it purely because the impression it gave — specifically, of a restaurant putting more onus on Instagrammable visual impact than the common sense effectiveness of each dish — proved telling.
Dorothy and Marshall is a timely, well-intentioned attempt to bring some hearty affordable luxury and Zone 1 swagger to the chain-swamped suburbs. It is run with an eager friendliness by a likeable team in natty, specially monogrammed, green work-wear jackets. Nonetheless, my experience of a recent family lunch there was one of unforced errors, imbalanced flavours and a haunting lack of options.
That said, there is no debating the magnificence of the location. Built in 1906, the Old Town Hall is locally notable — it was the venue for David Bowie’s first marriage in 1970 — but had sat derelict for a decade. Now, in acknowledgement of the purported post-pandemic revolution in hybrid working and suburban life, it has been transformed into a handsomely restored co-working space of glistening marble, fluted columns and subterranean holding cells requisitioned, fittingly, in the name of meeting rooms.
Dorothy and Marshall is the dining component of this thrusting new complex (there is a boutique hotel on the way) and occupies what was once the magistrates’ court; a capacious, wood-panelled arena of triple-height, barrel-vaulted ceilings, tasteful framed depictions of pastoral life, and natural light gushing in through gigantic windows.
The burgers, once the long swords had been removed, were mystifying pile-ups of meat, cheese and flaky bun
As Madeleine, the kids and I stumbled in — to a room mostly filled with other parents and sippy cup-flinging toddlers — even the light violence of a Bossa Nova Nirvana cover on the stereo couldn’t puncture our awe. Then, regrettably, our choices from the oddly thin, 10-item lunch menu of British dishes started to arrive. A winter greens salad of beetroot, roast squash and lettuce was delicately presented but came slopped in a dressing crying out for some acidic zip. Roasted cauliflower steak, which Mads actually didn’t mind, was faintly flavoured and garnished with thyme leaves that hadn’t been removed from their stalks. Fries had been showered in so much acrid, off-putting truffle that it had almost been deployed as a January dieting aid. And those burgers, once the long swords had been removed, were mystifying, poorly constructed pile-ups of meat, cheese and flaky bun that seemed to collapse if you so much as looked at them.
I sense that Dorothy and Marshall’s streamlined offering is down to cost-cutting and an understandable lack of staffing capacity (at dinner and weekends the menu grows significantly). And there were some dishes — solidly-executed battered cod cheeks; an intensely sweet treacle tart — that just about worked. But the bleakness of the current economic picture applies to diners as well as restaurateurs. Which is to say that, struggling to get the basics right feels particularly hard to justify at the moment.
I have a distinct soft spot for Bromley, the land of laser tag and shopping malls that was the glittering mini-metropolis of my commuter belt youth. And I genuinely hope Dorothy and Marshall will improve as it beds in. But as it stands, in the soaring hall of this listed former courthouse, I struggle to see how most visitors would not bang their own imaginary gavels, and come to the swiftest and most damning of verdicts.
