Telephone: 020 7596 3444
Address: Grosvenor Square, London W1
Dinner for two, including wine and service, £110
Dr Robert Atkins, the king of the low-carbohydrate diet, died a couple of weeks back, at a relatively youthful 72. What a perfect story to point up the mendacity of the diet industry. For decades, Atkins made a fortune selling desperate souls on the idea that the secret to a long, healthy life lay in the pages of his books. And then what happens? One morning he slips on an icy Manhattan pavement, bangs his head and a few days later they're arranging the funeral. All of which proves that the fates have a very dark sense of humour, and that life is far too random for it to be wasted on a diet that excludes bread and pasta.
A good meal is a life-affirming experience and if ever there was a chap who looks like he should be able to deliver one of those, it's Brian Turner. You know Brian: that nice, bulky Yorkshireman off the telly. The one who does Ready Steady Cook and all that other celeb-chef stuff. Behind the showbiz CV, however, is another one full of experience and Michelin stars at places like the Savoy and the Capital, and restaurants with his own name above the door. A new Turner venture, particularly one promising to champion bold and flavourful British food, should be a winner.
That it isn't, that it's a dud, speaks volumes about the desperation that can set in at this level of the London restaurant business. A big name like Turner can't just set up a restaurant. He has to bring on the dancing girls and the snake charmers, which artifice doesn't suit him. The problems here begin with the location, the Millennium Mayfair Hotel on Grosvenor Square, a mere grenade's throw away from the barricades and watch towers that now surround the American Embassy. It is a gloomy, hard-arsed spot, an impression not helped by the massive black flags outside bearing Turner's name. It makes it look as if the four horsemen of the apocalypse have given up on all that eternal damnation stuff and gone into the catering business.
Maybe I am not far off the mark, for the first part of Brian Turner Mayfair, the bar, might well be what Dante had in mind when he imagined the seventh circle of hell. It's like a 70s Spanish gay disco, but with none of the erotic charge: blank walls, fierce pin-prick lighting, dismally grating house music and a bloody barman who has no idea what a kir is, let alone how to mix a good one. Thank God he had a friend to show him. I can't for a moment imagine a mature chap like Brian Turner wishing to drink in this bar and that's the problem. It is in no way a reflection of the man upon whom it is all being sold.
Onwards into the dining room, which is a cooler affair: white walls and raised platforms, divided by screens. It is big on glassware and much like the moon - which is to say it has no atmosphere. It would help if the reception telephone didn't seem to ring loudly in every corner and if they cranked down the music. I also got little buzz out of seeing Turner himself, in pristine chef's whites showing not a single sauce stain, constantly wandering around the tables.
I suppose I expected him to be doing the cooking, what with his name on those flags and all.
Silly me.
And so to the food, the tone of which was set by a taster of two little deep-fried whitebait. Fine. Whitebait are a good British dish. But why tell us they have been crusted with coconut? In what way is that an improvement? I have no idea, because we couldn't taste the coconut at all. My first course was another bit of innovation, black pudding spring rolls with chilli plum sauce. I will be honest.
I ordered these specifically because they sounded awful. I gain no satisfaction from the fact that they were - the black pudding sodden from the oil soaked up by the pastry in deep frying. It seems Turner is prepared to talk British food, but then does not trust it to deliver.
My companion, Toby, started with smoked eel, streaky bacon and warm potato salad, which was better but not great, and at this level and this price (£8.50), it should be great. But the potato was a touch undercooked.
Indeed, the best we got out of this meal was adequate, as in a main course of grilled veal chop with chipolatas, lardons, button onions and mustard mash. It did the job, but we could both come up with other places which could do it better. My Lincolnshire duckling was well roasted - particularly the breast - but the accompanying pear and apricot stuffing was a solid lump of stodge. I can't list the other things on the plate because I can't recall them and I can't be fagged to look them up. Either they made an impression upon me, or they didn't. And they didn't.
Toby finished with a white chocolate and raspberry trifle which, to my taste, was too dainty.
The best part of the meal was my luscious fudge and blueberry bread-and-butter pudding, a superb carbohydrate overload which I ordered in memory of dear Dr Atkins. Service was swift, but both edgy and nervous, as if they thought a storm was approaching.
And the bill for this with a £25 bottle of Rioja was £110. It is a lot of money for an experience that flirted only with adequacy and was too often on nodding terms with awful. Be warned. There are a lot of big London openings heading our way over the next few months. I shall, of course, look for better. But sometimes it is better to travel hopefully than to arrive.
