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An awesome and ridiculous film that leaves you thrilled beyond the point of your natural endurance
2012
Theatre
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Blood Brothers
Music
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Muse
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London,
Fay Maschler's rating
Reader rating
Description: Hopefully Des & David (the 'new' captains of the outfit formerly called Conran Restaurants) will eventually get around to sorting out this "cavernous" St James's "factory" -- with its "poor" service and "formulaic" brasserie fare, it continues to "live off its reputation".
Food: 
Service:
Ambience:
Phone: 020 7930 6767
Website: http://www.quaglinos.co.uk
Open: Lunch: Monday-Sunday 12noon-3pm Dinner: Monday-Thursday 5.30pm-12midnight Friday-Saturday 5.30pm-1am Sunday 5.30pm-11pm
Dress code: Smart / Casual
Good for: Good food, Ambience.
Payment options: All major credit cards accepted.
Unmemorable: the restaurant today seems smaller and has lost its verve
Quaglino's as we now know it opened on Valentine’s Day 1993 in the depths of a recession. It was a bold move on the part of Terence Conran, who had made his comeback as a restaurateur in 1987 with Bibendum and, a few years later, Blueprint Café and Le Pont de la Tour at Butler’s Wharf, the start of his “gastrodrome”.
The 400-seater Quaglino’s cost £2.5 million to build, a pretty penny 15 years ago and still a sum to conjure with. Conran had always admired the huge brasseries of Paris, establishments such as La Coupole, Lipp and Bofinger, and wanted to install in London the same air of matter-of-factness and lack of class consciousness these dining engines display.
I remember well his sense of jubilation as the behemoth came together with every detail attended to, from the design of the Q-shaped metal ashtrays to the trick of light played by the overhead glazing that mimicked the time of day. I can also bring to mind my own sense of excitement standing at the top of the curvaceous staircase, looking down and along the depth of an aircraft hangar space until the eye was drawn to the mosaic-fronted crustacea “altar” where plateaux de fruits de mer were raised as a sacrament.
Sir Terence recently announced the sale of his majority shareholding in D&D London, as Conran Restaurants became known after a partial management buyout in 2006. The moment he views with his characteristic bullishness as a new beginning — “I am not exactly collapsed on my laurels,” he told the Financial Times — seemed an appropriate one to revisit what was perhaps, in restaurant terms, the apotheosis of one man’s vision.
The deskbats these days are eastern European but they have picked up seam-lessly the ability to scan a list of bookings with the air of being quite convinced your name won’t be there. Earlier, on the telephone, I had had to battle over not giving my credit card number. I said my usual “You give me your card number and I’ll give you mine,” and the girl on the other end eventually relented. Since on a Friday evening the restaurant never filled up, it turned out to have been a pointless exchange.
Maybe — almost certainly — it is me that’s got bigger, but the restaurant seemed smaller. Large groups sitting in long lines — rather negating the point of gathering together — made up a section of the clientele. We were given a table with a good view of the open kitchen behind glass — one of the first in a London restaurant — but any activity there was seemed to be taking place out of sight. A funeral parlour arrangement of pink and white lilies perched on the central divide was a choice of which I am certain the modern Quaglino’s founder would not have approved.
The menu no longer pays tribute to Brasserie Lipp in its typography. It is a long, not very galvanising list of predictable hits which could have been assembled by a committee. The one place where a little homework, and maybe even the hand of the chef, is evident is the separate menu for Le Tour Gastronome featuring the regions of France.
Brittany (1 April to 19 May) could have delivered crêpes aux fruits de mer followed by cotriade (fish stew) and then soufflé au Calvados for £19.50 including half a bottle of wine. “One of us must have that,” I said, and then noticed that the small print on the menu stipulates that “Quaglino’s special menus must be ordered in advance”. How would you know to do that? There is nothing about it on the Quaglino’s website. (There are, however, among job opportunities, vacancies for head chef, head waiter and sales and marketing manager.) Perhaps the telephonists, rather than spending time trying to wheedle customer’s credit card details from them, could apprise them of the good value of Le Tour Gastronome.
Another menu feature is Rare Breed of the Week, which last week was Denham Castle lamb — “please ask your waiter for today’s dish”. We did, but our cold-eyed waiter in a dark suit said there was no Denham Castle lamb available. Thin slices of bread and a mingy dab of soft butter were brought. Où sont les baguettes d’antan?
The dishes we ordered were serviceable: mushrooms on toast, nice shaggy field mushrooms on brioche; lobster, mango and ratte potato salad, quite generous with the lobster; finely bread-crumbed chicken Kiev deconstructed with the herby garlic butter served in a bowl (doesn’t spurt into your silk shirt); short rib of beef braised à la Niçoise, tender and quite fragrant. Desserts were less satisfactory. The vanilla ice cream with dark chocolate sauce tasted cheap. Blood-orange jelly had no wobble. Three cheeses for £7.50 were served in cheese-paring amounts.
Quag’s has had its heyday. Terence Conran now says he wants to create “a very small group of restaurants that I love and where I know everybody who works there — what I enjoyed when I set up restaurants in the early days”. Good old Tel. He can, as ever, see which way the wind is blowing.
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
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