Alain Ducasse at the Dorchester, Park Lane, London W1 (020 7629 8866)
Meal for two, including wine and service (but excluding white truffles £300. (yes, really)
The festive lights are still twinkling down the lobby of the Dorchester Hotel right now, and if what you want is a rush of seasonal cheer, stay there and order a cocktail. For God's sake, do not open the door on the left, for through there is the nightmare of Christmas present, and probably of past and future, too. Through there, dressed in funereal shades of grey, is a restaurant called Alain Ducasse at the Dorchester, and it is enough to make even the happiest of souls run screaming for the Prozac. Jolly it is not. Expensive and disappointing it most certainly is.
First, a little context. Alain Ducasse is the only chef in the world to have run a trio of Michelin three-star restaurants at the same time. He also has others aimed at the mass market, a number of which I have eaten at and all of which I have hated, for their blistering combination of stupid concept, mediocre food and shameful pricing. However, the 'signature' restaurants - in Monaco, Paris and, until recently, New York - are meant to be different. They are meant to be the full Ducasse. Now New York has gone he has opened this venture in London. That explains the price and the huge level of expectation.
I genuinely don't have a problem with restaurants charging £75 for three courses. I just demand that it be memorable, in a losing-your-virginity way. Not memorable in an accident-with a threshing-machine way.
I should add that I have eaten at Ducasse's signature restaurant in Paris, and it was everything it should have been: pure, precise neo-classicism, with lots of bright, luxurious flavours. In short, I have something with which to compare this experience, and it compares very badly indeed. It started with a pointless dish of what we were told was 'seasonal' crudites, including cucumber, the season for which is a distant memory. With it, on ice, was a bowl of whipped cream cheese, which tasted like something out of an aerosol. An anchovy and olive sauce for dipping was better, but hardly startling.
The best starter was a soft-boiled egg with crayfish, cepes and a classic sauce Nantua, (made with cream, shellfish stock and brandy). All the elements played their part. The worst sounded grim on the menu and was worse in the mouth. Squid 'bonbons' brought strange, denatured flaps of squid wrapped around a nutty, gooey stuffing of, well, I'm still not really sure. A heap of green vegetables completed the dish, much as a dose of bronchitis completes the flu.
It was the third starter that best summed up the cooking here. At its heart was a lobe of seared foie gras that had been perfectly cooked. As had the halibut, the pigeon, the venison and the fillet steak at the heart of our main dishes. They were masterclasses in how to cook key ingredients. But good dishes they weren't. The foie was partnered with mango; it is a marriage destined for divorce. The pigeon, brought to us by mistake, did come with a delicious dice of the liver on toast, but there was also a truly grim slab of burnt radicchio. Why any kitchen would think that a good idea escapes me. It was, as we were by this point, horribly bitter. The venison came with a smear of sauce and not much else. My main course was listed as 'Peppered Angus beef fillet, "pont neuf" potatoes'. So, steak and chips then, and not very good steak and chips. At this level, if you place a banal dish on the menu, it should make you consider it anew. This made me think of better versions I could get elsewhere.
Between these, the kitchen comped us each some pumpkin ravioli with a foamy parmesan emulsion, and a blizzard of white truffles. Yours, if you are not a restaurant critic they are attempting to commit frottage upon, for £65 each. It was terrific - rich, autumnal, silky, dense - and thus pointed up the shocking weakness of everything else we ate. It was as if the kitchen knew. Before dessert we paid £12 for the cheese course, and I challenge you to find a more insulting selection in London. No trolley. Just four mingy, pre-plated pieces with gloopy chutneys of indeterminate provenance.
A lack of generosity was obvious at dessert, too. Ducasse is famed for his rum baba, and rightly so. In Paris they have a trolley laden with 20 different rums for you to choose from. Here, there are just two bottles. Clearly they are watching the overhead, which may also explain the aggressive act which is the wine list. I tried to find something for under £30; then I admitted defeat and ordered a completely overpriced Riesling for £45. It summed up the whole grasping, mediocre experience.
Ducasse is capable of brilliance, but apparently he doesn't think London deserves that. The bandwagon has rolled into town, but all the key musicians have been left at home. My advice: stay outside the door and admire the twinkling lights. It's cheaper and won't make you mad as hell.
