I was at a Dorset campsite with my family at the weekend, communing with nature in the confusing modern manner that also tends to involve solar panel showers, sourdough pizza vans and armfuls of dormant devices ferried to reception so that they can be charged. Which, I suppose, is another way of saying that when the Thomas Straker controversy hit — you know, the still-raging online fallout over a chef’s picture of his homogeneously white, all-male brigade and the lamentably huffy, tin-eared response he initially gave when he was called out about it — I was blissfully phoneless and oblivious.
I did catch his second response yesterday, where he apologised, and spoke of being “committed to ensuring diversity in my restaurants”. It was a welcome follow-up.
Now, of course, the Take Economy is in overdrive. A lot of very valuable things are being said about the invisible barriers faced by both women and ethnic minorities in the industry, as well as the uselessness of simply shrugging at the problem. However, as we strap in for weeks of take and bad faith counter-take, I find myself hoping that Strakergate’s necessary, difficult conversations do not totally obscure the genuinely positive strides being made elsewhere.
And so, it feels serendipitous that this week’s restaurant just happens to feature a chef from an under-represented background, cooking with heart, soul and skill in a place where you would not necessarily expect to find him.
The Good Front Room at The Langham, Dom Taylor’s splashy, Caribbean-inspired newcomer, is not without its conceptual wrinkles. But, nonetheless, this is jubilant, irrepressible food that provides the best possible advert for diversified thinking and fresh perspectives. Part of The Good Front Room’s incongruity is the unusual way it came into being. Those of you who watched Channel 4’s Five Star Kitchen will know that Taylor was the eventual champion of a competition wherein budding professional chefs battled to “win” the keys to The Langham’shallowed Palm Court dining room.
Of course, a squint at the small print shows that the space is only theirs for an initial six months (and just for a handful of evening services a week). And, if I had a creeping worry that the whole enterprise was purely a PR exercise for a 158-year-old luxury hotel brand, then that sense bloomed asI arrived, for an early solo dinner, into an echoey, anonymously grand lobby space, accessorised here and therewith lone diners tucking into roomservice-grade burgers (bizarrely, the hotel keeps its all-day menu running concurrently alongside Taylor’s) and the dregs of the afternoon tea service taking photos of their tiered cake stands.
Much-needed island warmth arrived in the form of a resuscitative, carnival-strength rum punch cocktail and a jerk chicken starter: luscious, raggedly charred pieces of bird with a fang-baring, utterly thrilling heat. Then came vegan jackfruit and callaloo patties, mysteriously buttery, crimped wonders concealing a sprawling universe of intricate spicing, that may be among the best I’ve ever had. If there is a key to understanding Taylor’s love for the largesse and skill of Caribbean domestic kitchen traditions, then it comes from the fact that you get all the available sides, whatever main you order from the set, £75 for three courses.
For me, this meant a sumptuous piece of banana leaf baked sea bream, deeply permeated by pimento, and orbited by green banana gratin, maple and lime glazed fried plantain, coconut-flecked rice and peas, and an alluring, brightly acidic okra and fennel slaw. True, the layer of sorrel jelly on a stout punch panna cotta had the unfortunate sense-memory of undiluted cordial. But looking around as the room started to fill — with young couples on dates, dressed-up Caribbean aunties picking approvingly at curry goat, and rapt African-American tourists who had watched Taylor on Netflix — it was hard to not be touched by the significance of what this chef, and, despite the conditional nature of the agreement, this hotel, have brought to a storied old space.
Here’s hoping this is just the start. Here’s hoping, really, that this visible success does not slow, that it elicits a long-term future either at The Langham or elsewhere. Because The Good Front Room, and Taylor’s dynamic, big-hearted cooking, deserves a forever home in a dining city that, as we have been so recently reminded, should always be trying to do better.
