‘An uneasy place’: Chez Roux at The Langham reviewed

The Langham is a Victorian Gothic hotel opposite the BBC in Portland Place. It’s an odd place: haunted house near the wreckage of Newsnight. Perhaps I think this because the last time I came here I interviewed Jeremy Paxman about his ghosts: when he was anxious he banged the wall. The time before, my godmother collapsed at tea in this very room, now Chez Roux. It’s a vast, dimly lit silver space. The lights are long and slender, like giant earrings. Palms wobble. A palm court is a Victorian conceit; the Titanic also had one. I wonder if they were here for Napoleon III, Guy Burgess, or Sherlock Holmes. I wonder how they stay alive in darkness.

It’s a hard thing to dress, a windowless room. The only restaurants I know that pull it off are Brasserie Zédel under Piccadilly, which copes by pretending to be a mirage, and Le Gavroche, of course. Its chef Albert Roux was the first to win three Michelin stars at a British restaurant. Le Gavroche closed in January, and if it has a successor, it is this. There is a painting of Albert at the entrance: angry in his whites. He overlooks a painting of Michel, his son, who runs this restaurant. He looks anxious, half-finished, with black mist around his head. I inhabit the space between them, which is Chez Roux.

Later, when I explore downstairs – more vast, windowless spaces, alarming carpets, and chairs no one would sit in – I find a small exhibition dedicated to the Langham, in the style of the town museum once found everywhere under Soviet rule. There is a photograph of the Langham newly built, marooned on a dirt track near Regent’s Park; a wedding menu from 1938, coyly anonymised; a pair of shoes donated by a tennis champion who stayed here; a memoir; a fork.