Chefs injecting fun into fine dining

The winds of change are howling through London’s fine dining scene. While the casual dining trend continues to gather pace, its influence has seeped into some of the top hotel restaurants in the capital, which, keen not to appear out of touch or risk losing business by failing to give customers what they want, are adapting their approach to fine dining.

An interesting shift is taking place in the London dining scene, and while burger vans and fried chicken shacks still have their place, after years of penny pinching, a fondness for fine dining has returned, with Londoners craving attentive customer service and a sense of occasion.

As we emerge from the grips of the recession, with the capital’s property prices booming like never before, there has been a change in mindsets, with a desire to feel well looked after while eating out taking precedence over forfeiting good service for the sake of dining somewhere trendy.

Being made to feel not only welcome but special has become a non-negotiable for many Londoners when they dine out, though rather than stuffy service, starched tablecloths and whispering waiters, a new breed of fine dining establishment has emerged in recent months that prides itself on offering, according to Gordon Ramsay protégé Marcus Wareing, a “dinner party atmosphere.”

Marcus Wareing

Having just signed a new 10-year contract with The Berkeley hotel in Knightsbridge, Wareing is so keen to adapt to the times that his eponymous, two Michelin-starred restaurant has just undergone a £1.4m makeover due to it being, in Wareing’s words, “dated”.

Closing the restaurant for two months, Wareing brought in the Robert Angell Design Studio, which recently put its hand to Hartnett, Holder & Co at Lime Wood in Hampshire and Kaspar’s at The Savoy, to look after the interiors.

Dropping the “Wareing” from the name, as part of the pricy revamp, starched linen was banished to the bonfire and burgundy interiors were replaced with soft greens, chestnut browns and marble to give the space a lighter, more modern feel, while tasting menus will be less heavily relied upon.

In order to make the place less intimidating, service is American in its approach, with warmth and friendliness triumphing over formality.

“My number one priority is ending the stuffiness. People want to come and relax and not sit there while the waiter talks you through the 10 different ingredients in the dish,” 43-year-old Wareing told the London Evening Standard newspaper at the time of the relaunch, adding, “If someone comes in and wants three courses and a glass of Chardonnay, we’re not going to stick our noses in the air.

I want people to have that feeling you get when you’ve been to a really good dinner party. That’s what I want to reproduce.” In a bid to give the dining room a more relaxed feel, a 10-seater chef’s table has been added, giving diners the opportunity of a front row seat to the action.

The lunch menu also includes on-trend tasting plates, such as goat’s curd on sourdough and chicken liver parfait with bacon jam at an affordable £6 a pop.

Across town, another hotel restaurant where the focus is firmly on the fun side of fine dining is Chiltern Firehouse. To describe the venue as white-hot would be an understatement.

Nuno Mendes

In the few months since it opened inside what used to be one of London’s oldest fire stations in Marylebone, the reception has been nothing short of rapturous to the point where mere mortals now have to kill one of their well-heeled neighbours or have head chef Nuno Mendes on speed dial in order to secure a table, and even then they won’t be seated until 9pm.

Having opened the Michelin-starred Viajante at the Town Hall Hotel in Bethnal Green in 2010, which focused on elaborate tasting menus, earlier this year, softly spoken Portuguese-born Mendes announced he was upping sticks to the Chiltern Firehouse, having been lured to Marylebone by hip hotelier André Balazs to work on his first project outside the US.

Steak tartare

While you might not have heard of Balazs, you’ll be familiar with his haunts – celebrity favourite Château Marmont in Hollywood and The Mercer in New York to name but two.

And it seems Balazs has brought that all-important sprinkling of stardust across the pond, with the shiny new opening drawing A-listers in their droves, from Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper to our own Kate Moss and Guy Ritchie.

This is where the beautiful come to feed, in a space that offers the intoxicating combination of a sense of seeing and being seen amid a veil of privacy. Diners are far too discreet to be approaching the stars and asking for a selfie.

An air of hushed reverence prevails, with terrestrial beings chowing down alongside Hollywood glamazons without the need for a velvet rope.

Set within a red brick, late 19th century Grade II listed building in a quiet corner of Marylebone, even entry to the restaurant is noteworthy – diners are greeted by a doorman dressed in a grey top hat and tailcoat, while waitresses wear Emilia Wickstead jumpsuits in arresting hues like turquoise and orange.

While there are many more beautiful dining rooms in London – Berners Tavern and The Wolseley spring to mind, there are few that offer such a palpable buzz as Chiltern Firehouse. Packed to the rafters and with an upbeat, Latin-centric soundtrack, dining here gives you a sense of being at the centre of the vortex.

Slow roasted short rib

There’s an urgency about the place, as if everyone appreciates how lucky they are to be there. While some tables, like the large one above the entrance, are a voyeur’s delight, booths and partitions offer privacy for those seeking it.

With a quirky red and beige ceiling recalling a vintage Bakerloo line tube carriage, the focal point is a huge open kitchen equipped with a grand charcoal oven and copper fixtures and fittings.

Beavering away in the thick of it is the heavily bearded Nuno, his right hand man, Dale Osborne, of Dinner by Heston Blumenthal fame, and their team of worker bees in chocolate brown aprons.

With their American accent, dishes are on-trend and show off Mendes’ time spent cooking in the US. And while this is no Viajante, with the focus firmly on à la carte rather than tasting menus, diners are in capable hands, with many of the dishes displaying the signature beauty, intricacy and attention to detail that helped put Viajante on the map.

Monkfish, for example, is cooked in a sealed pan with hot charcoal and fresh pine in an inspired marriage of earth and sea, while chargrilled Ibérico pork with roasted garlic and collard greens is butter-soft with a whisper of smoke offering an additional layer of complexity and the crunch of the greens all-important texture.

And that’s where Mendes’ skill comes in. He always thinks of the bigger picture and the full taste experience that must take texture into account. His dishes are like stories, where the beginning and end are as important as the meat in the middle.

Wine comes courtesy of the ebullient Romain Audrerie, formerly of Sir Terence Conran’s Lutyens on Fleet Street, who swirls around the room with magnificent swagger serving half bottles of old Barbaresco and Château Climens 2006 by the glass.

While Mendes already seems preoccupied with the reopening of Viajante 2.0 in a secret east London location later this year, he should be proud of what he’s achieved in record time at Chiltern Firehouse: creating a restaurant where style and substance elegantly collide, keeping both the foodies and the fashionistas happy.

Keen to offer something completely different to his three Michelin-starred London flagship at The Dorchester, for his second London hotel restaurant venture, Alain Ducasse, who has no less than 21 Michelin stars to his name, has taken the sights, sounds and smells of the French Riviera as the inspiration for his new restaurant at the five-star Bulgari hotel in Knightsbridge.

Alain Ducasse and Damien Leroux

Chucking out the rule book, in place of shiny shoes and starched collars, staff at Rivea sport Converse trainers and navy cardigans in what has to be one of the boldest sartorial moves in history for a high class hotel restaurant. Designed by Ducasse, the chef believes the uniforms are just the right side of informal.

Socca

Run by Damien Leroux, who has spent that last decade working for Ducasse in Provence and Monaco, in another departure from the classic fine dining format, plates at Rivea, which opened last month, are small and designed for sharing.

Inspired by the food markets of Southern France and Italy, dishes, served on pretty pale blue glass, include vitello tonnato, sea bream ceviche and socca, a crepe popular in Provence made from chickpea flower served rolled into a cone in a napkin. To add a dash of theatre to proceedings, Provençal rosé is served by the glass from Jeroboams.

Cocktails meanwhile, come courtesy of master mixologist Nick Strangeway, who has taken the French Riviera as his inspiration, weaving the likes of Pastis and lavender into his creations to evoke the region’s sun-soaked, cicada-filled atmosphere.

“Alain is always listening to clients. They want to eat in elegant surroundings but also want something more relaxed away from stuffiness,” says the Bulgari’s general manager, Sylvain Ercoli, adding that Rivea’s informal nature is “ideal” for London.

Perhaps on a research mission, Ducasse was recently spotted dining at the aforementioned Chiltern Firehouse, which prides itself on informal fine dining.

Perhaps London’s most important restaurant launch of 2014, Simon Rogan’s hotly anticipated Fera at Claridge’s opened last month replacing Gordon Ramsay’s three Michelin-starred eponymous restaurant after a 12-year stint.

Simon Rogan

While Gordon Ramsay at Claridge’s operated a strict dress code, with a jacket and tie required for men, Fera has a more accessible feel, with walnut tables devoid of tablecloths and diners encouraged to pop into the restaurant’s semi-open kitchen to chat to Rogan and his team.

Barley watercress canapé

Said to be inspired by the “rhythms of nature”, Fera, which means “wild” in Latin, highlights the influence of nature on Rogan’s seasonally-focused cuisine on display as his two Michelin-starred flagship, L’Enclume in Cumbria.

While the menu at Fera will change regularly to reflect the seasons, currently in the line up are the likes of pea flour wafers and salt cod mousse; clay baked asparagus with pork skin, mead and ramson shoots; plaice braised in nettle butter with horseradish, cockles and salsify; and dry aged Herwick hogget with pickled tongue and turnips.

“Fera will have L’Enclume DNA running through it but you will be eating a completely different repertoire of the dishes. It won’t be stuffy or elitist. It will be for anyone interested in great service and brilliant food,” Rogan told GQ magazine ahead of the opening.

He is making no secret of the fact that he’s got three Michelin star ambitions for Fera, which, if he succeeds, would make it the first hotel restaurant in London to achieve such an accolade.

Having only been open for a few months, Fera has already been described by as “a dazzling confirmation of Rogan’s arrival in gastronomy’s international big league.” And if anyone can further hammer London’s credentials on the culinary world map then Rogan can.

But while the capital’s top hotel restaurants go from strength to strength, in today’s more informal climate, where a buzzy atmosphere is as important as what’s on your plate, they are swinging to a different beat and are helping to inject the fun back into fine dining.