The Garden at Corinthia, Whitehall Place, London SW1A 2BD (020 7321 3012). Starters £11-£14.50; mains £24-£30; desserts £10-£12 and wines from £48
If wealth has any purpose, it is to make things easier, which is to say less effortful. The Garden at the shiny Corinthia hotel on London’s Whitehall Place has this sewn up. There, they have been offering a spendy après-ski experience, only without the tiresome bother of any skiing, what with mountains being in short supply on the Thames Embankment. As a man with weak ankles, no balance and a reasonable concern about the impact of gravity upon what, given my job, I should call my critical mass, this strikes me as a top idea.
At the point I visit, London is a few days off being plunged into the sudden darkness of tier 3. While still in tier 2, members of different households are allowed to dine together, but only outside. Some restaurant operators, looking to keep themselves afloat, have grabbed the opportunity. The Corinthia is one of them. No matter that it’s winter. No matter that it’s the coldest evening of the year so far. We have booked. Into the great outdoors we must go.
The Garden occupies a deep, curving gash of a courtyard in the middle of the building, strung with evergreen garlands intertwined with fairy lights, twinkling merrily in the darkness. It’s planted with huge patio umbrellas, their edges almost touching. At one end there is a marble fireplace, guttering with fat yellow flames. It’s clearly the prime spot in this brave new alfresco world. Otherwise, warmth comes from towering electric heaters with orange, glowing oval heads that peer down upon you, as if modelled on ET. There’s one to a table. We find ourselves willing the next table to finish up and leave so that we might get their heater, too, like prisoners in a gulag looking to inherit a dead man’s shoes. Albeit a gilded gulag, with patio heaters and mac ’n’ cheese at £25 a pop.
We need not fret. The lovely waiters are a study in stoicism and grace in this chiller, and genuinely don’t seem to mind that they’re working here instead of inside Kerridge’s Bar & Grill elsewhere in the same hotel, which has outrageous luxuries, like central heating. They are on hand with blankets and practically tuck us in, like we are patients at an upmarket sanatorium, colonic irrigation optional. For good measure, they give us each a small tumbler of something warm and very boozy. I neck it eagerly. We are brought a brown paper bag bearing the legend “You bake me happy”. It’s a small, warm loaf of chewy sourdough. There is good salty butter with which to slather it. I now know that we will live to see the dawn.
The courtyard is full of glossy people looking comfortable in their skins, some of which once belonged to small furry animals. This is a place where the wearing of fur coats is considered entirely reasonable. Being furless, I pull my blanket tighter and peer at the menu. It’s Alpine cooking by way of Mayfair, at Mayfair prices. The Garden is very much all fur coat and many pairs of bespoke silky knickers. They may call it a parsley velouté, but only because calling it soup when it costs £11 might make some people really cross. Like you: it might make you really cross. But not the people who have chosen to be here in this courtyard tonight.
The starters provide the one poor dish. It’s a flabby, undercooked rosti, of a sort that should inspire a delegation from the Swiss embassy to troop along to the nearby Foreign Office to register a polite, clipped complaint. The cured salmon and dollops of soured cream and caviar with which it’s topped are better, but also help to dampen what should be lots of crisp potato. Now you understand the depths of my struggle. My caviar is simply ruining my rosti. A warm salad of duck breast, roasted pink and sliced thinly, with sweet, sugar-crusted walnuts, bitter endive and apple is much better.
The main courses are belters. They’re designed to help you slip gently into a polite stupor, until rescue comes. Think venison stew with cheese dumplings, or fish pie with cod, trout, boiled eggs, cheese and mustard mash potato. A braised octopus cassoulet with morteau sausage is topped with golden crisped breadcrumbs that seem to shimmer, even in the darkness. Dig in to find a mess of darkly sauced white beans and piggy parts, all of it with a rich seafood umami kick. It’s a dish you scoop away at until you think you’re done. You put down your spoon only to pick it up again and have another go, and another until, oh look, it’s all gone.
That £25 macaroni and cheese for two, made with Beaufort and Tomme de Savoie, is clearly intended, from its menu billing, to be the main event. It’s mac ’n’ cheese that’s been to Swiss finishing school. Have it with slow-cooked beef, or mushrooms and truffles or, as I do, with lobster and shellfish. The bronzed, herb-flecked surface is pitted with opened mussels, like black-winged butterflies about to take flight. There’s a light frothy cheese sauce, and boulders of lobster which, despite the heat of the dish, retain their bite. It’s luscious and comforting, rich and luxurious, intense and compelling. It’s what the ruling classes will be eating as western civilisation finally collapses around them.
We finish with kaiserschmarrn, a cheery dish of torn, icing-sugar-dusted pancakes with plum compote. Naturally, being the Observer’s man, I order the cheapest wine on the list; naturally, that’s the vinho verde at an “are you serious?” £48. They are serious. There’s not quite enough alcohol in vinho verde to soften the blow.
At which point I should acknowledge the obvious: I am not for a moment suggesting you should actually go to the Garden for dinner, should Covid-19 restrictions allow. Heavens no. Sure, most of the food is, of its type, very good indeed. The staff are delightful in the face of a short straw, gallantly pulled. And it’s weirdly fun to eat outside when it’s 4C. But the pricing redefines brutal, which means many of the other diners are of a sort that would make you suddenly forget you knew how to perform the Heimlich manoeuvre, if you saw one of them choking. Then again if you’re feeling robbed of your annual skiing trip, and at least want the après bit, you now know where to go. Or not. Your call.
News bites
We all need something to look forward to, so mark 12 February in the diary. It’s Chinese new year. To mark it, chef Andrew Wong, of the always brilliant A Wong in London’s Victoria, is putting together a New Year’s feast for home delivery. It will be available through Star Chefs, a new restaurant food delivery platform which has also pledged to contribute a proportion of profits to food education in primary schools. There’s no information yet on the cost of the Wong offering. To find out more, sign up to their newsletter at starchefs.co.uk.
The pan-Asian chain Wagamama has launched a new menu for what we’re meant to be calling Veganuary, including meat-free versions of pre-existing dishes. There’s a vegan version of chilli squid using king oyster mushrooms and ‘No Duck Donburi’ utilising shredded seitan and shiitake mushrooms. More eye-catchingly, they have pledged that by the end of 2021 50% of their main menu will be meat free.
After the review in this column of their delivery option a few weeks back, Northcote in Lancashire took around 1000 extra orders. Now their sister hotel, the Stafford in London, also home to the Game Bird, is launching a delivery box available to most of the UK. It will change weekly but the first, at £95 for two, included a game sausage roll, lobster vol au vent, maple glazed duck breast with a potato and onion pie and sticky toffee pudding.
Email Jay at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk or follow him on Twitter @jayrayner1
