London,

Palm

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Cuisine: American
A meal for two with wine, about £160.

1 Pont Street, SW1X 9EJ

Nearest Tube: Knightsbridge/Sloane Square

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Phone: 020 7201 0710

Open: Open Mon-Fri noon-2.30pm and Sat and Sun noon-11pm.

 

 

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Palm is all about image

 

Surf ’n’ turf: Palm’s executive chef Jason Wallis

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I can’t get the hang of this recession, and here’s another reason why: in Pont Street, on the site of what was once Drones, a new steakhouse has opened. It is called Palm, and is part of a 27-strong American chain: East Hampton, Nashville, Tampa... Belgravia. Does Palm chime with the current mood in food or, indeed, anything else? No, it doesn’t. Not even remotely.

To eat at Palm is to experience time travel. At dinner there last Monday, I looked up from my steak and, feeling a touch queasy, I took in the room. Jeez. It was 1985, or something. It was, in fact, as if I’d fallen into an early Jay McInerney novel — or, at least, the kind of novel Jay McInerney might have written if he had been vastly more boring and less talented than he is.

The blow-dries. The facelifts. The prices! “You are not the kind of girl who would be at a place like this at this time of the evening,” I thought. And then, more drastically: “You are not the kind of girl who will be coming here ever again.” 

But I’m getting ahead of myself. The dining room at Palm has a clubby feel, all dark wood and white tablecloths. It’s fine. Its walls, on the other hand, are painted with these weird murals featuring portraits of celebrities. They are hilariously bad. Kate Winslet and Hugh Grant look about 800 years old. Ralph Fiennes looks like a man who is wanted for an extremely unpleasant sex crime. Chris Martin looks just about like himself but his appearance is rather unwarranted, because I believe that the Coldplay singer follows a mostly macrobiotic diet. Palm is lots of things but it is definitely not macrobiotic.

Some of the faces, however, were unfamiliar to me, though the Gstaad set will no doubt recognise them instantly. “Who is Peter Bachman?” I asked my companion, T. “He is, er, someone who wants to look like Roger Moore,” he said, authoritative as ever.  

Palm is proudly American, so you get a white-jacketed server who tells you her name and promises herself to you for the rest of the evening. Ours was so sweet, I could hardly meet her eye once the food started arriving. The more terrible it was, the more I felt obliged to shout “Delicious!” while staring beyond her shoulder at a woman in an Azzedine Alaia dress so tight she more or less had to hop, feet together, to her table.

I started with a jumbo shrimp cocktail. It consisted of four large prawns on a single leaf of iceberg lettuce, a bowl of tomato ketchup and grated horseradish on the side. The prawns were fridge-fresh: cold, clammy, utterly tasteless.

They also came in at — I did the math! — an amazing £3.33 each. T had, and liked, the seasame seared yellowfin, a choice I felt anxious about, having failed to remember which kind of tuna it is that we’re not supposed to be eating right now. (I had just digested the Palm menu, for God’s sake; I was still in a state of some shock.) But it’s bluefin that is verboten, isn’t it? 

Not that Palm’s clientele are likely to worry about this sort of thing. In this, the age of the carbon footprint, Palm sells “aged USDA prime beef”. Yes, they fly it in. The least expensive cut, a 7oz filet mignon, will set you back £31, though if, like me, you want to be po-faced about this arrangement, you can order from the British selections, where the 7oz filet mignon is £25.

Whatever you order, however, you will be asked whether your want your steak hot or cold in the middle. I was puzzled by this. Do some people prefer their steak cold in the middle? Why? But by then I had so many questions buzzing like bees through my brain, I was starting to feel distinctly odd. Why, for instance, do you get a dark napkin at Palm if you are wearing dark trousers, and a white one if you are wearing pale trousers? Not even our server was able to explain this mystery adequately.

As for the meat, it was fine: not especially tasteless, but not particularly tasty either. The chips, medium-sized with skins, were horrible, which was unfathomable to me. Americans are so good at chips (though not as good as the denizens of Whitby). For the sake of my colon, I asked for a hearts of lettuce salad. This turned out to be one iceberg lettuce, sliced into two giant wedges and covered with “ranch” dressing, plus three slices of watery beef tomato. Grotesque, and lazy to boot.

With one slice of cheesecake — sweet as molasses, claggy as glue — between us, and a bottle of Palm’s least expensive red (chianti), dinner came to £167. Not since the morning of the Scandal of Duck Island have I been so outraged. You can eat in some of the best, most creative, restaurants in the world for less. Why would anyone want to spend their money here?

But then I looked round the room again. Navy blazers with gold buttons. Louis Vuitton bags. Inflatable lips. Diamonds as big as macadamia nuts. Bloody macho beef for the boys. Push-it-round-your plate salad for the girls. This crowd see a bill, and they think: the bigger, the better.

Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.

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