Review at a glance: ★★★★★
To whom we turn in moments of gloom and glory can be instructive, a filter of our truest friends. I’ve fallen out with the Ritz a couple of times, including once after a visit to the bar which didn’t warrant a review (“But you said it was lovely!” they said. “Yes,” I replied. “But I also apologised when I was run over. Mum’s a stickler for manners.”) No matter. We could have a stand-up row and the Ritz would forever be the restaurant I chose when wanting consolation or celebration. So when my partner Twiggy agreed to marry me, with no obvious signs of head injury, it was here that was booked.
It’s not what you’d call subtle, being a neo-baroque chamber of pink and gilt. I imagine the designers meant to conjure a room Louis XIV might feel at home in, though there’s every chance they were just big into strawberry Angel Delight. I guess we’ll never know. It is cartoonishly grand, what children might picture when first hearing about fine-dining (the truth being blander, greyer, involving more being talked at). In that way a meal here is always an occasion, as though the opulence demands it.
Happily, they didn’t spunk the budget on cornicing alone. I’ve been in the kitchens. They house a staff of white-coated chefs of such number and order that news of them running a flag up the pole and declaring independence wouldn’t be such a turn-up for the books. What they produce confounds and dumbfounds, boggles minds and gasts flabbers. It is food that leaves me fog-headed with pleasure. Vertiginously toqued executive chef John Williams has revolutionised the restaurant he joined two decades ago and while much of what he’s put in place suggests a loyalty to French restaurateuring of the oldest school, his sleight of hand is that the place is anything but dated. He has bear-hugged tradition but created a sense of timelessness. Can there be cutting-edge classicism?
I’ve never fully grasped what “modern British” is meant to encapsulate — is it pub burrata, Simon Rogan sorcery, both, neither? — but the Ritz might be an advert for it at its best. There is dedication to this country’s ingredients, clear acknowledgement that we still have seasons (just about), and come on, any restaurant stuffing a crisp pipe of tuile with coronation chicken can’t be that à la Française, can it? A stunner, that canapé, thrust aloft on a silver medal stand, accompanied by duck liver parfait sitting under a gingerbread mortarboard, and a sable topped with Parmesan mousse and a brightening jolt of basil. Would it be possible to eat too many of these? I’d at least like to try.
It is futile to comment on cooking that is perfect, other than to say that it is. Restaurants often pronounce that good meals rely on little more than sourcing the best ingredients, but then down the pub chefs sidle up to me and start muttering about budgets and Scroogeish paymasters. Williams and his team must not have these; every bite seems an endorsement that, yes, they really have uncovered the best of the best. When a slice of lobster as thick as a wrist arrived, sitting among a forest of heritage tomatoes, I could almost taste its final morning swim. Roscoff onions came sweet and sticky with cutlets of pink lamb as soft as hurt feelings, the sauce rich with girolle mushrooms. Red mullet arrived with skin crisped the colour of earth and strands of courgette bound together like pages of a novella. Did human hands really do all this?
Roscoff onions came sweet and sticky with cutlets of pink lamb as soft as hurt feelings
We ate the three-course, lunchtime-only, £86 menu. There is a great opportunity to spend more, to have the duck tableside and delight in Crêpes Suzette. But almost everything offers a convincer that Michelin is getting this place wrong (one star? Triple it, pronto). Service has remained identical whenever I’ve eaten here: flawless, neither overfamiliar nor frosty. Tailcoated waiters bob as a means to send and receive signals, never calling or waving. All they do is welcome. You do not feel silly for confusing a type of cheese with a mushroom. Wine is translated.
The Ritz is the restaurant I routinely name as London’s best, because it is. Only no one ever believes me, on the grounds it’s too preposterously obvious to possibly be true. But it is. Accept no substitute, not even the afternoon tea.
