La Môme is the new ‘Mediterranean’ restaurant at the Berkeley, Knightsbridge’s monumental grand hotel. It has changed, as all London’s grand hotels have changed: it is Little Dubai in the cold and the chintz is on the bonfire. Fairy lights hang from the awning of the entrance, as if in an eternal Christmas. I barely recognise it, though I ate an impersonation of a mandarin in its overwrought Instagram-friendly bakery two years ago, and it was inferior to a real mandarin. I cling to that.
Designers must keep busy: this means grand hotels are always getting renovated – it’s life of a kind. The lobby feels gold, though that may only be an impression. The chairs are huge and furry – like friendly polar bears is my best guess – because the very rich do not want the chairs that others have, and here is the possibility of comedy. We need it. I feel we nailed chairs centuries ago – chairs are chairs, after all – but here they are, with their ridiculous polar bear chairs, preening.
These are beautiful people – I have never seen such good haircuts or subtle tailoring (style magazines call it ‘stealth wealth’) – and they know it, and record it, as if for some personalised Domesday Book. A slender, long-haired girl walks to the loo – it is icy blue, velvet and exquisite – filming herself. As she walks into the cubicle I wonder when she will turn the camera off: never? La Môme mirrors them, so they will be comfortable: identification through soft furnishing is a kind of validation. It is expansive (250 seats, including a terrace). The walls are pale, the floor is marble, the woods are dark, the plants are loved. Waiters speak with the gentleness of consultants addressing burns victims, because that is what we pay for. There is still empathy in Knightsbridge – for a price.
La Môme is from Ugo and Antoine Lecorché, who have restaurants in Cannes and Monte Carlo, and it is a very good restaurant, if you can handle its peculiar unreality. (For its regular clients it is not unreality at all.) You may even love it for this, but I can’t because I remember how London was before the age of oligarchy. (It was more varied, and interesting.) Even so, there is none of the larceny of the nearby Peninsula, though its restaurant is in the lobby: perhaps the real food was further in, and only gawpers and day trippers get the ready-meal-style spaghetti near Concorde’s nose as punishment for our presumption.
Waiters speak with the gentleness of consultants addressing burns victims
This, though, is the good stuff. The olive oil for the bread – the best kind, needle sharp – is infused with salt and herbs in front of us. the waiter cuts them with monumental scissors that are very clean. The Parmesan gem salad – with hazelnuts, aged Parmesan and mustard and truffle dressing – is perfectly made, delicious; the devil baby chicken, spatchcocked and marinated in ‘devil sauce’, is exquisitely spiced and rendered; the tuna with ponzu vinaigrette and trout roe is fine. For pudding we take tiramisu in a little pot. It is creamier and less dense than usual, and it is one of the loveliest things I have eaten anywhere. The only failing was the aubergine alla parmigiana: aubergine baked with tomatoes, topped with Parmesan and Scamorza. My companion named it slightly undercooked; it was removed from the bill without rancour and free coffee was provided for hurt feelings.
This is a gaudy addition to London’s restaurants for the super-rich: the food is very serious, and fine, and we paid £200 (without alcohol). My only complaint, no doubt a ridiculous one, is how insular it felt. Dine here, but get a haircut.
La Môme London, Wilton Place, SW1X 7RL; tel: 020 3795 6787.
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