Strangers’ Dining Room at the House of Commons, Westminster, London SW1A 0AA. Visit parliament.uk to book. Meal for two including drinks and service £180
Many wretched schemes have been devised within the Houses of Parliament to separate the British from their money, in return for scant reward. There’s the poll tax, which was a charge on breathing. There are VAT increases, instituted to sort out a financial mess you didn’t make. To these should be added one more: the shameful price they are charging to serve mediocre cooking to hapless members of the public.
The idea is delightful. The Houses of Parliament belong to us all. Security allowing, we should be allowed in. So why not open up the dining rooms to those eager to dine literally like a lord, or even just like Michael Gove? Periodically they open bookings for tables in the Members’ or the Strangers’ Dining Room. The dinner service in the Strangers’ Dining Room continues on Tuesday and Wednesday evenings until mid-July. Further dates will soon be announced, which is unfortunate.
There is a complex online booking process. You need to fill in a form, give a credit card number and promise to bring ID. But they do big the whole thing up. There is talk of “award-winning chefs” without saying which awards they’ve won. They mention “top-end British cuisine” and that “classic styling comes in the form of white tablecloths”. Be still my beating heart.
So you turn up and they x-ray your bag and search you (though, interestingly, never ask to see that ID). Through the great echoing vault of Westminster Hall you trot, up the stairs and into the grandly painted lady that is the Central Lobby between the Commons and the Lords. Stop and look up at the glorious ceiling. To be here at the epicentre of our democracy is a thing. Please be a little awestruck and breathless. It will help you put off breathing in for as long as possible. Because when you do you will be whacked by the essence of British institution: the fetid smell of boiled cabbage.
I wouldn’t normally complain. This really is a British institution. Inside it looks like every minor public school or corrupt Oxbridge college that ever spat out a mildly dysfunctional beta male with a quiet interest in ornithology, onanism and flagellation. It should smell of boiled cabbage. But here’s the thing. The dinner menu in your future is going to cost you – deep breath – £65 a head, before drinks, service and self-loathing. All that, and the smell of stewed brassicas.
Still, onwards we go to the Strangers’ Dining Room, around the corner from the Lobby, or more correctly into an overflow room next door. The wood panelling is thick, the paintings glower, the carpet is a violent migraine-floral and beyond the window, the Thames shimmers as dusk approaches. The front-of-house staff are loyal retainers of a certain age. They feel like Westminster lifers, here to serve, in a sturdy way, until their hips give out. This incursion by the public, and that table of Japanese tourists over there, seems to unsettle them. I want to give them a hug and whisper that we’ll all be gone soon along with our filthy, raised expectations. Certainly, they don’t co-ordinate anything with each other. They’ll all have a cheery crack at taking your order even when it’s been taken. Each will try to pour your wine even when you’ve already asked to pour it yourself.
That £65 three-course menu offers four choices per course plus petit fours, coffee and a side order of profound regret. It’s an overwritten document name-checking lots of flavours that go missing in action. Likewise, the food it describes represents a kitchen straining at a modernity it might have read about once in a magazine. White crabmeat is mixed in with too much crème fraîche, until loose and floppy. It’s meant to slap you with mustard but doesn’t. There’s a disc of flavourless kohlrabi over the top. It claims there’s fresh chilli in there but we can’t find it. On the other hand, there are lumps of pineapple. What I have thus learned: pineapple and crab hate each other. Another starter brings a serviceable salt beef terrine with capers and what is called “beef dripping sourdough crisp”. Look, if you’re going to promise me rendered cow fat, I want to taste cow fat. I can’t.
Both mains are roast dinners that have been at Mum’s dressing-up box. They look like grown-up plates of cooking but the more you dig in the less you get. There are over-reduced Marmitey sauces, and vegetables that have been less trimmed than given the full Brazilian. What the hell happened to the rest of them? My lamb dish looks like Mr McGregor’s garden. They’ve sliced all the baby carrots off at the knees so they stand vertical. There are two small pieces of lamb and “almond croquettes”, which taste not of almond. The potatoes on a chicken dish are so small and turned they look like those grooved dowling rods Ikea gives you to assemble a set of bookshelves called Billy or Hemnes.
And back we swirl to price. Imagine £15 of that £65 went on the starters. It’s outrageous, but let’s just try imagining that. It means they’re charging £40 or so for those mains. Chuck on a £35 bottle of wine because there’s little choice below that and with service you’re on £180. You can go to 98% of restaurants in London for less than £180. The waiters will be pleased to see you and the room won’t smell of ruined cabbage. Instead you’re here, waving in a tiny £10 marzipan tart which is light on the marzipan and a rhubarb mousse that tastes of existential angst. Oh, and it takes just 70 minutes. We sit down at 8pm. At 9.10pm, desserts are cleared. It’s meant to be accessible to the public, but cost is its own special barrier.
What’s most troubling is I suspect they don’t know. The kitchen probably thinks this mediocrity is cutting-edge stuff. It’s not. It’s banqueting food at a ring-road hotel. It’s cutting edge as cooked by people who haven’t eaten out enough. And yes, I know the building needs renovating but that’s what I pay my taxes for. I’m not subsidising the works by overpaying for sliced bloody carrots. It could have been a carnival of Britishness: of perfect suet puddings, ribs of beef with horseradish followed by trifle. Instead, as well as a nasty taste in my mouth, it left me thinking that the problem with parliament really isn’t just the politicians.
News bites
If you want that British institution thing done right, head to the Guinea Grill just off Berkeley Square, central London. It’s the place for prawn cocktails, steaks, Beef Wellington, smoked salmon and steak and kidney pie. Their mixed grill is a thing of beauty and includes ox heart, calf’s liver, lamb’s kidney and a bunch of other things besides. The wine list is big on huge French reds (theguinea.co.uk).
Chef Alexis Gauthier of his eponymous Soho restaurant plans to take the entire menu vegan within two years. Speaking at a Restaurant Magazine conference recently, he said he would not ‘be creating any new dishes involving meat and fish or things with eggs and butter’.
It’s always interesting to see what the bestsellers are from Amazon’s online grocery business. Right now the No 1 bestseller in confectionery is a pack of Grenade High Protein Low Carb bars. And No 2? A massively high-carb collection of retro sweetshop classics.
Email Jay at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk or follow him on Twitter @jayrayner1
