‘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. Nearby I find a painting of a woman proudly walking a goose, and I mention this because I like it.

Even so, this is an uneasy place. On Sunday night a few tables are filled under the palms: a solitary woman dressed for exercise, whom I instinctively admire; two men who made money and grew matching moustaches to celebrate; an ancient couple with silver faces, who match the walls. I reject the tasting menu from self-preservation – I don’t want to be controlled with sauces – and go à la carte.

First, we eat a cheese toastie, here named welsh rarebit (£14). Like the palms, it doesn’t belong here: it is the wrong colour (pale brown). We have a tiny spring chicken (£28), with little paper hats on its legs, which are charming and fall into the sauce. (The sauces are excellent. Albert would approve.) Then an expensive piece of Buccleuch beef fillet (£49). It is small and round and sits on what I think is a piece of fried bread, which is terrible, but I like it anyway.

We don’t eat pudding but have two tiny pieces of cheese: Somerset cheddar and a Nottinghamshire stilton. They are not the best. The mashed potato – a punch of garlic with tiny leeks – is perfect, and we order another, which is perhaps not the thing to do. Nor is ordering ‘the cheapest brandy you have’, and the staff leave us alone after that.

The food is uneven, and it is all so sombre. Laughing isn’t exactly banned Chez Roux, but it feels like it, and that is enough.