‘Thinks of the diner, not the chef’: Claridge’s Restaurant, reviewed

The BBC made a very odd documentary about the renovation of Claridge’s: The Mayfair Hotel Megabuild. They filmed, agog, as the hotel grew eight new storeys – three above, and five below – between 2014 and 2021 while staying open: guests slept and ate, unaware of ‘Narnia doors’ to the building site. (That Narnia is where guests aren’t indicates what Claridge’s employees cannot put into words without spontaneously combusting.) Labourers dug the basement by hand and impersonated the Artful Dodger when management toured. The BBC described the new penthouse at length without mentioning that it is gross, with a grand piano in a glass box on a terrace like a Richard Clayderman-themed nightmare. A roof was assembled off-site and stuck on as for a doll’s house. The spa, which offers a facial treatment where the guest must wear a Darth Vader-style mask, flooded in a rainstorm.

But amid the abyss, something has bloomed: something always does. Claridge’s has a perfect restaurant again: the kind which deserves its own Edwardian tribute fiction. I haven’t eaten here since the self-conscious Fera and its ridiculous faux-rustic tableware: if you can afford these prices, there is no need to impersonate a hobbit so you can live with yourself. I am tired of restaurant in search of pumpkin patch. I wasn’t tempted by its successor either, which was run by the equally self-conscious Daniel Humm, who serves tiny ‘immigrant-inspired’ plates at Eleven Madison Park in New York City. He left when management wouldn’t let him go vegan – he has inflicted vegan on his New York City customers because he can’t steal their private aircraft – and so now we have this.

It indicates its lack of pretension with its name, which is Claridge’s Restaurant.