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Description: At London's luxury Lanesborough Hotel dinner isn't just dining, it's a culinary experience. The latest addition to the family, Apsleys, lives up to the hype with its glamorous take on Italian food, a cuisine so often neglected in fine dining circles. You won't find clichéd chequered tablecloths and waiters flourishing comedy pepper grinders here. At Apsleys the emphasis is on subtle luxury with a glass roof offering soaring views and a Venetian inspired interior complete with contemporary chandeliers and plushly upholstered sofas. Head Chef Nick Bell uses seasonal ingredients, many imported directly from Italy, to create traditionally inspired dishes such as a mouthwatering rabbit cacciatora or lamb cutlets served with caponata.
Phone: 020 7259 5599
Website: http://www.lanesborough.com
Open: Noon-2.45pm and 7-10.45pm
Dress code: Smart casual
Payment options: All major cards accepted
Italian by cooking rather than Birth: English head chef Nick Bell
Hotels are fascinating microcosms. Only the other day I read that if a guest rings down to reception to ask for an extra pillow it means they would like a hooker sent up. I feel sure that at The Lanes-borough they would despatch only the finest goosedown. When this hotel opened in 1991 in the building that had previously housed St George’s Hospital, it did so in the grand manner (as envisaged by America owners) and in the teeth of a recession.
What small world do the current owners live in though when, upon deciding to convert the restaurant that had been called The Conservatory (once OutPatients) into an Italian restaurant with a chef who had worked with Giorgio Locatelli at Zafferano and Cecconi’s, they name it after the London house of that famous Italian the first Duke of Wellington?
The reference to nearby Apsley House is also awkward since Number One, London — as it is sometimes called — is filled with a magnificent collection of antique paintings, porcelain, sculpture and furniture and The Lanesborough has fireplaces with gas-fuelled flames and reproductions on the walls of those bogus-looking ancestors who seem to have spawned many a genteel hotel.
The design of the restaurant Apsleys by New York-based Tihany Design is, usefully, just generically high-end. Chandeliers hanging from the glazed vaulted roof are huge and glittering, tables are well spaced, sofas seem suited to a boudoir and a woven-to-order loopily patterned carpet was presumably unbelievably expensive.
If, in a little while, the management decide to re-style the restaurant as Rus-sian or Belgian or Lebanese or Las Vegas or even English, the surroundings will still do their duty in predicting and producing formal service, expensive wines and large bills.
The slightly disquieting large painting, The Great Daedala, by Simon Casson, described as “A Greek methodical painting capturing the passion between Zeus, the king of the ancient Greek gods, and his wife”, can happily preside, although Hera will always seem put out as she appears to have lost her head.
Italian food is signalled by the arrival of breads including two types of grissini and foccacia and a dish designed to hold two pools of extra virgin olive oil, one the “house oil”, the other from Sicily. Chunks of Parmesan with genuinely aged Balsamic vinegar almost as thick as treacle are also given. Chef of Apsleys is Nick Bell, who is Italian by cooking rather than by birth, a trick of fate that hasn’t stopped Andy Needham at Michelin-starred Zafferano from speaking the language fluently in the gastronomic sense.
We decide not to go the four-course route through the long menu but start the dinner with one choice from Antipasti and one from Zuppa e Primi. Spring vegetable salad with grey mullet roe (bottarga) is an idea that would have been lovely had it been better executed, with the root vegetables tender and the grated bottarga not wasted on the rim of the plate. Bigoli pasta with sea urchins and sweet chilli also read better than it ate as the pasta was undercooked.
In the main course, “new-season” lamb seemed to have got its months mixed up — I suppose you can’t blame it, given the weather — and was coarse in texture. The cubes of potato fried with rosemary accompanying it turned out to be one of the highlights of the meal. Veal sweetbreads have a fugitive flavour and need some seasoning. The little fried pieces were completely tasteless but the garnish of peas, broad beans, spinach and mint — a definite incentive for that menu decision — were some compensation.
When we went for dinner it was early days for Apsleys. Staff were falling over themselves to deal with the light sprinkling of customers. Dishes were cleared away with excessive zeal and too many solicitous queries as to the level of our enjoyment interrupted conversation.
At one point a waiter of the old school came over to say patronisingly to the little lady (me): “And was dessert the very best part of the meal?” Since my dessert tasted like an orange someone had come across when defrosting the freezer, I was able to say quite firmly that it wasn’t.
I went back for lunch to try the £24 regional set menu. The featured region was Campania in the south of Italy. Having enjoyed the Spaghetti Pommarola — although I would have skinned the tomatoes — I was a bit dismayed to find the casseroled squid (tough) swimming in an unannounced tomato sauce. Pasquale Cosmai who is, I think, restaurant manager could not have been nicer or more anxious to put things right. He is a treasure at Apsleys, a restaurant that seems to be floundering where its identity is concerned. An English chef cooking an Italian menu might be at the heart of the muddle.
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
