The Garden at Corinthia, London: ‘The food is good, the pricing brutal’ – restaurant review
The Garden at Corinthia, Whitehall Place, London SW1A 2BD (020 7321 3012). Starters £11-£14.50; mains £24-£30; desserts £10-£12 and wines from £48
If wealth has any objective, it is to make issues simpler, which is to say much less effortful. The Garden at the shiny Corinthia lodge on London’s Whitehall Place has this sewn up. There, they’ve been providing a spendy après-ski expertise, solely with out the tiresome trouble of any snowboarding, what with mountains being in brief provide on the Thames Embankment. As a person with weak ankles, no stability and an inexpensive concern about the affect of gravity upon what, given my job, I ought to name my crucial mass, this strikes me as a high concept.
At the level I go to, London is a couple of days off being plunged into the sudden darkness of tier 3. While nonetheless in tier 2, members of various households are allowed to dine collectively, however solely outdoors. Some restaurant operators, trying to preserve themselves afloat, have grabbed the alternative. The Corinthia is considered one of them. No matter that it’s winter. No matter that it’s the coldest night of the yr to this point. We have booked. Into the nice open air we should go.
The Garden occupies a deep, curving gash of a courtyard in the center of the constructing, strung with evergreen garlands intertwined with fairy lights, twinkling merrily in the darkness. It’s planted with enormous patio umbrellas, their edges virtually touching. At one finish there is a marble hearth, guttering with fats yellow flames. It’s clearly the prime spot on this courageous new alfresco world. Otherwise, heat comes from towering electrical heaters with orange, glowing oval heads that peer down upon you, as if modelled on ET. There’s one to a desk. We discover ourselves prepared the subsequent desk to complete up and depart in order that we’d get their heater, too, like prisoners in a gulag trying to inherit a lifeless man’s footwear. Albeit a gilded gulag, with patio heaters and mac ’n’ cheese at £25 a pop.
We needn’t fret. The beautiful waiters are a examine in stoicism and charm on this chiller, and genuinely don’t appear to thoughts that they’re working right here as a substitute of inside Kerridge’s Bar & Grill elsewhere in the identical lodge, which has outrageous luxuries, like central heating. They are readily available with blankets and virtually tuck us in, like we’re sufferers at an upmarket sanatorium, colonic irrigation non-compulsory. For good measure, they offer us every a small tumbler of one thing heat and really boozy. I neck it eagerly. We are introduced a brown paper bag bearing the legend “You bake me happy”. It’s a small, heat loaf of chewy sourdough. There is good salty butter with which to slather it. I now know that we are going to dwell to see the daybreak.
The courtyard is stuffed with shiny folks trying snug of their skins, a few of which as soon as belonged to small furry animals. This is a spot the place the sporting of fur coats is thought of fully affordable. Being furless, I pull my blanket tighter and peer at the menu. It’s Alpine cooking by means of Mayfair, at Mayfair costs. The Garden is very a lot all fur coat and lots of pairs of bespoke silky knickers. They could name it a parsley velouté, however solely as a result of calling it soup when it prices £11 would possibly make some folks actually cross. Like you: it would make you actually cross. But not the individuals who have chosen to be right here on this courtyard tonight.
The starters present the one poor dish. It’s a flabby, undercooked rosti, of a kind that ought to encourage a delegation from the Swiss embassy to troop alongside to the close by Foreign Office to register a well mannered, clipped grievance. The cured salmon and dollops of soured cream and caviar with which it’s topped are higher, but in addition assist to dampen what must be a number of crisp potato. Now you perceive the depths of my wrestle. My caviar is merely ruining my rosti. A heat salad of duck breast, roasted pink and sliced thinly, with candy, sugar-crusted walnuts, bitter endive and apple is significantly better.
The predominant programs are belters. They’re designed that can assist you slip gently right into a well mannered stupor, till rescue comes. Think venison stew with cheese dumplings, or fish pie with cod, trout, boiled eggs, cheese and mustard mash potato. A braised octopus cassoulet with morteau sausage is topped with golden crisped breadcrumbs that appear to shimmer, even in the darkness. Dig in to discover a mess of darkly sauced white beans and piggy elements, all of it with a wealthy seafood umami kick. It’s a dish you scoop away at till you suppose you’re executed. You put down your spoon solely to choose it up once more and have one other go, and one other till, oh look, it’s all gone.
That £25 macaroni and cheese for 2, made with Beaufort and Tomme de Savoie, is clearly meant, from its menu billing, to be the predominant occasion. It’s mac ’n’ cheese that’s been to Swiss ending college. Have it with slow-cooked beef, or mushrooms and truffles or, as I do, with lobster and shellfish. The bronzed, herb-flecked floor is pitted with opened mussels, like black-winged butterflies about to take flight. There’s a lightweight frothy cheese sauce, and boulders of lobster which, regardless of the warmth of the dish, retain their chunk. It’s luscious and comforting, wealthy and opulent, intense and compelling. It’s what the ruling lessons shall be consuming as western civilisation lastly collapses round them.
We end with kaiserschmarrn, a cheery dish of torn, icing-sugar-dusted pancakes with plum compote. Naturally, being the Observer’s man, I order the least expensive wine on the record; naturally, that’s the vinho verde at an “are you serious?” £48. They are critical. There’s not fairly sufficient alcohol in vinho verde to melt the blow.
At which level I ought to acknowledge the apparent: I’m not for a second suggesting it’s best to really go to the Garden for dinner, ought to Covid-19 restrictions enable. Heavens no. Sure, most of the food is, of its kind, superb certainly. The employees are pleasant in the face of a brief straw, gallantly pulled. And it’s weirdly enjoyable to eat outdoors when it’s 4C. But the pricing redefines brutal, which implies a lot of the different diners are of a kind that might make you all of a sudden neglect you knew tips on how to carry out the Heimlich manoeuvre, in case you noticed considered one of them choking. Then once more in case you’re feeling robbed of your annual snowboarding journey, and at least need the après bit, you now know the place to go. Or not. Your name.
News bites
We all want one thing to sit up for, so mark 12 February in the diary. It’s Chinese new yr. To mark it, chef Andrew Wong, of the all the time good A Wong in London’s Victoria, is placing collectively a New Year’s feast for dwelling supply. It shall be accessible by Star Chefs, a brand new restaurant food supply platform which has additionally pledged to contribute a proportion of income to food training in main faculties. There’s no info but on the value of the Wong providing. To discover out extra, signal as much as their e-newsletter at starchefs.co.uk.
The pan-Asian chain Wagamama has launched a brand new menu for what we’re meant to be calling Veganuary, together with meat-free variations of pre-existing dishes. There’s a vegan model of chilli squid utilizing king oyster mushrooms and ‘No Duck Donburi’ utilising shredded seitan and shiitake mushrooms. More eye-catchingly, they’ve pledged that by the finish of 2021 50% of their predominant menu shall be meat free.
After the review on this column of their supply possibility a couple of weeks again, Northcote in Lancashire took round 1000 further orders. Now their sister lodge, the Stafford in London, additionally dwelling to the Game Bird, is launching a delivery box accessible to most of the UK. It will change weekly however the first, at £95 for 2, included a sport sausage roll, lobster vol au vent, maple glazed duck breast with a potato and onion pie and sticky toffee pudding.
Email Jay at [email protected] or observe him on Twitter @jayrayner1
