Midway through dinner at Mauro Colagreco, the shining flagship at the head of Raffles London’s fearsome armada of all-new food and beverage options, our server invoked the idea of lively, familial warmth. “This service,” he intoned, setting down a crown of tear-and-share loaf, “is really all about breaking bread, and something that symbolises the conviviality of coming together for a feast”.
I looked around at the starched, grandly corniced parlour room (nestled beneath hotel rooms that start at £1,100 a night); the hulking battle-cruiser of a champagne trolley doling out circa £30 glasses of fizz; the waistcoated staff moving through the unpeopled quiet of a space my pal had already compared to his nan’s house. And then, on an evening notably low on laughs and levity, I allowed myself a little smile.
