The St Pancras Renaissance London Hotel, by Marriott, is 14 syllables long, which is too many. The best hotels have two syllables or at most three, but I can’t spend my life looking for two-syllable hotels with restaurants to review because I would go mad and so would you. Even so, the glorious red building, which looks like the backside of Christchurch after a dust storm, is at last restored and it has fine dining by Marcus Wareing in a restaurant called The Gilbert Scott.
In we go to the vast curved room, which is at the front of the hotel, with views of the Euston Road, which, as ever, looks like downtown Chernobyl hosting a Chicken Shack convention. And guess what? The walls are mustard-coloured. You know how some stylistic crimes are so complete they destroy everything? This room is perhaps 80 foot long and 30 foot high. It is a great, sexy curve, built before Disraeli put an Empress’s crown on Victoria’s small head. It should be full of reds and greens and all the pride and fury of its time. Or maybe it should be an edgy canteen with fish and chips and iPod docking stations for the backpackers in the terminal below. But it’s mustard — prim, dull, safe, despicable little mustard.
As if reading my fury, we are settled into the worst table in the restaurant, in a tiny corner next to a service station, so I can watch the staff decorating a pudding and enjoy a view of miles of uninterrupted mustard. I wouldn’t mind this, except it is almost empty at Friday lunchtime, so the staff have clearly decided they don’t like the look of us. Two women dining alone and we get a rubbish table.
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