1 Hamilton Place, Park Lane, London W1 (020 7409 3131)
Meal for two, with wine, £140
Too often at dinner there is a third, invisible person sitting alongside myself and my companion. That third person is you, the reader. Or not exactly you, but a version of you, the one who can be guaranteed to roll their eyes and snort with derision when they see the estimated cost of a meal for two. My heart falls when I see big numbers on menus, not because I think it's unreasonable - perhaps I have a realistic sense of what running a restaurant costs, perhaps I no longer have any sense at all - but because I know some of you will be reaching for the flaming torches and pitchforks. So go on, have another look at that £140. Now you have, we can get this out of the way. Theo Randall at the Intercontinental is painfully expensive. Deal with it, because here's the information you really need: this restaurant served me the best meal I have eaten all year.
To people in the know this will not come as a surprise, because Randall is the most famous chef you have never heard of. For 15 years he was head chef and silent partner alongside Ruth Rogers and Rose Gray at the famed River Cafe, which makes a virtue of serving expert Italian peasant food at plutocrat prices (higher, even, than here). Now he has been given his own berth at the recently renovated Intercontinental Hotel on London's Park Lane. It is stylish in a cool corporate way: slate grey floors at the edges and wood in the centre, with chocolate coloured panels holding a motif of backlit grasses. It is also windowless, which does give it an unnecessarily monkish air; why they couldn't have spent a bit of the £60m that went on the refurbishment on banging a few holes in the wall escapes me. Still, there is space enough for a bar where people can eat alone, and for another where prime ingredients and cakes can be laid out, and for a humungous kitchen.
What matters are the things that come out of that kitchen. Randall has spent time at Chez Panisse in California, and the obsession with ingredients there is on show here. Do not expect ground-breaking dishes. Do expect top quality stuff prepared to its very best advantage. We knew we were in for a good time when a plate of antipasti arrived, starring pieces of grilled onion squash (a new one on me) which had the even texture of butter and the pure vegetal sweetness one seeks but so rarely finds. We asked for, and were given, more.
My lovely starter of tender curls of squid with anchovies, chopped parsley and fresh cannellini beans, cooked to retain their bite, was completely trumped by my companion's plate of warm vegetables - carrots and red peppers, Swiss chard, and artichokes, both Jerusalem and globe - draped with bagna caude, that intense, dark, savoury sauce of anchovies and garlic. It says much that this carnivore coveted a plate of vegetables. Before our mains we shared a mid-course of pasta and though the tomato and mushroom sauce was underpowered, perhaps because a little too much of the starchy cooking water had been allowed in, the pasta itself had that ideal mix of silkiness and bite. This was pasta made by someone who has spent an awful lot of their professional life making pasta.
If anything, mains were better than the starters, and I'm sure you would argue that at around £26 each they ought to be: on the other side of the table, an impeccable grilled veal chop with punchy salsa verde and braised fennel, and for me, a roasted fish stew, packed full of clams, monkfish, red mullet, and the freshest of Dorset blue lobster, the meat slipping from the shell like a smooth thigh from a silk stocking.
We were offered the opportunity to be formally introduced to the tarts at the bar (no, not those sorts of tarts; I'm sure the Intercontinental isn't that sort of hotel), and certainly tarts this good deserve a few bows and curtsies. Randall's lemon tart is, quite simply, the best I have ever eaten. And I have eaten Heston Blumenthal's. The pastry is crisp and delicate, the filling soft without being liquid, and sharp without being sour. Almost as good was a crumbly chocolate and almond cake with a crisp chewy surface. I'm sure some will argue that a few of these are River Cafe dishes, simply moved across town. Personally, I think that after 15 years cooking all the lunches and dinners Ruth Rogers and Rose Gray didn't want to turn up for, Randall has the right to claim them as his own. At lunch, which they have just started serving, the place will doubtless be cheaper without being cheap. At dinner it is just expensive. But, all too rarely for London, it is worth it. My advice: put down the pitchforks and start saving.
