SEVEN PARK PLACE BY WILLIAM DRABBLE, ST JAMES'S HOTEL, LONDON SW1 (020 7311 600). MEAL FOR TWO, INCLUDING DRINKS AND SERVICE, £140
Before going to William Drabble's new restaurant at the St James's Hotel, I stopped for a drink at Mark Hix's new place on Brewer Street in Soho. Hix has a basement bar overseen by Nick Strangeway, a god among cocktail mavens, and the owner of possibly the finest goatee beard in London. Another small curiosity is that, by the terms of the licence, you have to eat something while you drink. Hence with your perfect White Lady might come a bowl of Hix's equally perfect still-warm pork scratchings. You can see why I might like it. As I nibbled and sipped I was struck by the contrast between where I was and where I was heading. The menu at the new Hix, as at the original in Clerkenwell, is full of prime ingredients treated simply and to the best of their advantage. Likewise, the dining room is full of jolly chatter. Had you given me the choice I would have stayed there, ordered the beef and oyster pie and been very happy indeed.
Instead I was destined to eat dinner in a room dressed like the inside of a 14-year-old girl's jewellery box; a deathly padded cell populated by Russian businessmen and their small children, and friendly but fearful waitresses who scrape crumbs off the table when there aren't any and take away your bread plate the moment you decline another roll, not because it makes sense to do these things but because that's what happens in restaurants that look like the inside of some 14-year-old girl's jewellery box. It sucks the very life out of you.
The real tragedy of all this is that the food is good. Really good. William Drabble can cook, much as Jenson Button can drive. He's top of the tree, championship level. Sadly, once again, the quality of his cooking is obscured by things which have nothing to do with it. I say once again because for many years Drabble has been known merely as the man who took over from Gordon Ramsay at Aubergine. He had many quiet admirers, but elsewhere he was talked of as the guy who wasn't Gordon. Now he has taken the space in the St James's Hotel which, for a short, ill-advised while, was home to some offshoot of a big-name German chef's empire (and yes, there are some big-name German chefs).
The problem is that the 26-cover space is an afterthought, a few corners and cubbyholes around a bar which have been flounced and primped and decorated to within an inch of their lives: beige leather banquettes, ironic takes on flock for the wallpaper, deadening carpets. But enough. If you do come here – and Drabble deserves your attention – you will find yourself in a quiet corner of London (think deathly hush) eating very well indeed.
It begins with a taster of tuna loin, seared to within just millimetres, leaving a dark red eye, alongside an avocado cream. His lobster raviolo starter with a butter sauce and caramelised cauliflower is the very essence of rich, indulgent neoclassical cooking. A fricassée of snails and bacon, with darkly caramelised vegetables, comes with a curl of mashed potato embedded with more snails and silky dots of an exquisitely balanced garlic cream.
A main-course assiette of veal – a beignet of the sweetbreads, darling little rounds of the loin, a rosy red piece of the tongue – is smart and detailed without being overwrought. Best of all are two expertly cooked breasts of grouse, the right shade of crimson on a lightly acidic blackberry sauce. All of this sits on a fritter densely flavoured with the liver, but with a curious though not completely pleasant, grainy texture. We forgive him this on account of the fabulous breasts.
Desserts are not the high point. A mint parfait with chocolate jelly was more an assembly than an idea, though an apple mousse was much better. Still, at the end came some very good petit fours, including a salt caramel that was so good we asked for seconds. For cooking like this, £45 for three courses, compared to what's being charged elsewhere in London, does not feel exorbitant.
But none of that – not the quality of the ingredients or the precision of the cooking or the slick if overly starched service – can detract from the fact that the experience was essentially joyless. I didn't feel fed. I felt interred. I kept thinking of the other dining room I had left behind a few hundred metres away, the one full of the noise of laughter and the clink of cutlery. That can never be a good thing.★
jay.rayner@observer.co.uk
