Foliage, Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park Hotel, London SW1 (020 7201 3723). Meal for two, including wine and service, £150
Why does eating in some expensive restaurants have to be such a hassle? Forgive me for being mercenary, but surely the more money you spend the less of a pain in the arse the experience should be? I've always presumed Michael Winner's life to be one endless barefoot walk on sheets of satin. Now, if my experience of Foliage at the Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park Hotel is anything to go by, I suspect it's a constant bed of nails.
The hassle began when I phoned to book a table for 8.15pm. They refused. Why not? We only take bookings on the hour or half-hour, because that way 'the kitchen can give every table the attention it deserves'. Call me cynical, but whose benefit is this for exactly? Next they told me I would have to give a credit card number.
(A particular problem for me because I'm trying to book under another name; I used my wife's, whose first name, helpfully, is androgynous.) If we don't show, they said, they will charge us £25 a head. Nice: I am being scolded just for booking.
If your restaurant was booked out nine months in advance, then fair enough: a no-show would be revenue wasted. But while we were in the restaurant, only four tables out of a dozen were occupied. So they probably could have coped with an 8.15pm booking, then.
Next, the service. First up, there were the waiters, who kept trying to take away my companion's food before he'd finished, until I heard myself say the words: 'Back off!' as if I were protecting us from muggers. And then there was the pantomime with the main course. I accept that my companion's sudden trip to the loo as his veal arrived complicated things. But when they whipped his main course away from the table, I assumed they were going to keep it warm under the pass lights. Being a polite chap I waited for it to come back before starting mine. And waited. And waited. When we asked what was happening we were told, patronisingly, that to maintain standards the entire dish was being remade. Well, great. But my turbot dish was now rather below par, being stone cold.
The great pity is that the cooking at the restaurant is very good. I have reviewed Foliage once before, when the great Hywel Jones was the chef. I returned on the recommendation of David Nicholls, executive chef of the Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park Hotel, and one of the great unsung heroes of British gastronomy. Nicholls has mentored some terrific chefs and the current incumbent at Foliage, Chris Staines, is certainly one of them.
I liked the taster of melon 'soup' with a crisp shard of Parma ham on top. My companion's terrine of rabbit confit with a leek and walnut dressing was a beautiful example of the charcutier's art, and while the langoustine that came with it may have been surplus to requirements, it was such a prime specimen that it was hard to begrudge its presence. My millefeuille of roast sweetbreads with onion compote and garlic caramel was a perfectly composed dish, and the cauliflower risotto with that herb-crusted veal lifted a humble vegetable far above its origins. This is highly evolved food, with an emphasis on flavour.
But my sharpest memory is that turbot dish three ways - roast, pot roast and in a ravioli - cooling to solidity before me, purely because of a cock-up in the service. · jay.rayner@observer.co.uk
