Gridiron, Como Metropolitan Hotel, 19 Old Park Lane, London W1K 1LB (020 7447 1080). Snacks, starters £7-£25; mains £20-£40; desserts £8-£9; wines from £29
Standalone restaurants in hotels are an act of shared illusion. Both the people who run them and those who eat in them have to pretend it’s a real place with its own robust identity, not just that space to the right of reception which, in another life, could have been a function room booked out for presentations by moist-lipped salespeople with timeshares to flog.
Gridiron at the blunt white box of a hotel that is the Metropolitan on London’s Park Lane has worked hard at the illusion. Serious people have been hired. The consultant chef, Richard Turner, has intimate knowledge of dead cow. At Hawksmoor, he gave the steak house a profoundly British accent. He set up the classy butcher’s Turner & George. Head chef Colin McSherry has worked at the Fat Duck and Ledbury and mastered the subtleties of the live fire cooking that gives the place its name, courtesy of the “gridiron” cooking grill that dominates the open kitchen. The wine list is by the sagacious Fiona Beckett, the Guardian’s wine writer.
When the menu appeared online, pre-opening, I sat at my desk, pawing my mouse and trying not to dribble. I loved the sound of “Wood roast scallop bone marrow XO”. I was sure it wanted to be my friend. The menu also mentioned porcini bread sauce, which surely had the potential to be fun, and mashed potato with Tunworth cheese, braised trotter and crackling. That’s a whole new verse of My Favourite Things, written just for me; a side dish which could have been devised specifically to dismay those who don’t do dairy, hate carbs, avoid meat in general, pig in particular, and think fat is evil. I am meant to respect dietary choices, but the best I can manage is a grudging tolerance. I wanted to be eating that mash, ideally in front of someone who disapproved.
And now here I am at Gridiron, and it’s a case of so nearly but not quite. It really is all but impossible to disguise the hotel side-room location. It’s not helped by the route to the loo down a gloomy, winter-cold stairwell. There’s also the punchy pricing which seems to be the words “What did you expect on Park Lane?” in numerals. The wine list has jolly section headings, such as “lush whites”, “big gorgeous reds” and “pinot and friends” but nothing under £29. I immediately know my choice will be governed less by taste than by what my newspaper expense account will stretch to. Hello Marchesi Migliorati from Abruzzo from the “racy whites” section, yours for £35. You’ll do.
The scallop dish on the specimen menu has, sadly, been replaced by a scallop with smoked roe and paprika butter. It’s odd and underwhelming. What looks like one cat paw-sized scallop, sliced into four for £12, seems to have been steamed to flaccid. The orange-coloured butter sauce is underpowered. I throw enough salt at it to distress a cardiologist, and the whole thing improves markedly. Even so it’s bested by a single leek which has been burnt whole over the flames. Those singed outer leaves have been opened up to reveal the soft, sweet, green innards, which have been dressed with pistachios and a lightly acidic beurre blanc. There’s also a grating of summer truffle which, while bland as ever, perhaps is meant to justify another £12 price tag. That’s a lot of anyone’s money for a leek, however thrilling it might be. A snack of a big meaty “duck sausage” with crisp shavings of dried black olive and tiny cubes of plum, weirdly feels better value at £8.
With the mains we are back in the land of classy menu writing. “XO tempura monkfish” comes with warm tartare sauce and kale. XO is meant to be a highly savoury seafood sauce, often made using dried shrimp or scallop. When I get hold of some, I try not to spoon it neat from the jar, or at the very least I try not to be seen doing so. Apparently, the XO element here is in the batter, but we can’t locate it. Which means it’s a nice-enough cylinder of battered fish, but slightly less than was claimed.
A grilled pork chop is done with all the skill, care and attention I would expect of a kitchen with this pedigree, and is well rested. I’m not entirely convinced by porcini bread sauce. Porcini are noble mushrooms. Bread sauce deserves our respect, whatever Philomena Cunk thinks it looks like. I’m not sure the two elements ever needed to be introduced to each other. Happily, Tunworth mash with trotter and crackling really is all kinds of everything. It reminds me of aligot, the mash sodden with the likes of gruyère or raclette until it goes stringy when spooned. This is aligot with added outrageousness and intent. I dredge at the potato with shards of crackling, scooping up mash with cubes of long-braised trotter in a lip-smacking jus. It is one edible Peter Greenaway movie: rich, deep and intense. This is what I came here for.
I had hoped for more moments like this. I look around the room, at the tables crowded with young, well-heeled couples who wouldn’t miss an opening, and the bloggers on freebies. Most of them have gone for one of the flamed cuts of beef with the multi-layered blocks of potato galette deep fried to golden in beef dripping. So basically, that’s steak and chips. Perhaps this is what I should have gone for, too. Perhaps I should have been less determined to explore the menu.
Dessert continues the uneven theme. A sticky toffee pudding with an Armagnac caramel sauce is workmanlike and has an end-of-dinner alcoholic kick. However, an English honey mincemeat tart – I am eating just before Christmas – is a majestic thing. It has the shortest of sweet crumbly pastry both top and bottom and the filling is dragged back from cloying by huge citrus notes.
But even that luscious end can’t quite stop me squinting at a bill of £180, especially one which has both an added service charge of 12.5% and an opportunity for hotel guests to write in a tip. The service is deft and friendly, but it really doesn’t need rewarding twice. The restaurant management tells me that they hadn’t noticed this, that they will get it sorted. I almost feel their pain. Perhaps it’s simply what happens when restaurants open in ultra-cool hotels on Park Lane, while trying to pretend they’re not located in the hotel at all.
News bites
I mentioned the Holborn Dining Room just last week in my review of the year, for its magnificent pie love, but it deserves another mention because it manages to be a hotel restaurant without feeling like one. Officially it’s part of the Rosewood Hotel but, courtesy of a separate entrance and distinct decor – lots of brass rail and leather - it has its own identity. What should you eat there? Pie, of course (holborndiningroom.com).
The opening of London’s first branch of the Taiwanese Din Tai Fung, famed for their soupy dumplings, has produced massive queues in Covent Garden. If you crave soupy dumplings, but don’t fancy queueing, go to the humble Beijing Dumpling on Lisle Street. I don’t know if they match Din Tai Fung’s – I’ve not queued – but I think they’re great.
A study by Barclaycard has found that a third of people aged 18-24 would be put off a restaurant that had no online or social media presence. If you’re a restaurateur who wishes to avoid that demographic you know what to do.
Email Jay at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk or follow him on Twitter @jayrayner1
