Lowndes Bar and Kitchen: torte a lesson

Only worth it if they bring it up to your room.

You know you’re in a Knightsbridge restaurant when you pop outside to take a phone call and find yourself stood next to a Lamborghini Diablo with Monaco number plates. Of course, the fact that you got off the Tube at Knightsbridge and then went to a restaurant just five minutes down the road will also give the game away.

Being a north-London boy I wouldn’t generally make the trip past central London and back out the other side. Knightsbridge and Kensington restaurants tend to be overpriced, aimed as they are at the rich residents and even richer tourists.

And it is these happy-to-pay-£230-a-night tourists that I dined with on Thursday night at the newly opened Lowndes Bar & Kitchen, which is attached to the five-star Jurmeirah Hotel.

It certainly had five-star furnishings, although the fact they were so new gave the room a slightly clinical feel. They had also made the huge mistake of lining the walls with American diner-style settees, which meant that when I leant back I was no less than a metre and a half from my companion and could hardly hear what she was saying over the muzak.

Not that I needed to talk to her. The restaurant itself was entertaining enough. The English of one waiter wasn’t quite good enough to explain to a hotel guest that he couldn’t be served food in the bar seating, our waitress couldn’t open our bottle of Rioja (I really need to branch out) and we had to make an late night call to their PR to prove we were on a review and didn’t have to pay the £110 food bill.

Which brings me to the meal, which was only remarkable for the price. A burger would set you back a staggering £15 and was the cheapest meal on the menu. Looking back I wish I’d tried it so I knew what a £15 burger tastes like, but I think I’d have been disappointed.  

But first I had the world’s smallest scallops – none of which were more than 2cm wide – in a saffron mayonnaise, accompanied by a solitary piece of salad garnish. Had there been a few more, or the scallops less anorexic, it would have been a nice dish.

Ignoring the temptation of a burger I had the duck (£18.50) with a redcurrant jus and sweet potato mash. The latter tasted like it had been boiled in tea, which while not unpleasant didn’t suit the sweet jus at all. The duck was a nice bit of meat but, despite being warned it was served medium rare, it was more the other side of medium and therefore a tad stringy.

My chocolate torte (the waitress’s recommendation) was no better than something out of a tin, although the ice cream was excellent. I hope this was homemade, or else  Cart D’or is nicer than I remember.

So thoroughly unremarkable, completely overpriced and lacking in atmosphere. If you can afford the rooms, you can afford the food, but only as a last resort because in central London, you will always be within 10 minutes walk of a much better meal and a fuller wallet.

   

Joe's cafe: not for builders

Joe’s Cafe rather under sells itself. It sounds like a builders’ cafe where the dress code is high vis jackets and paint stained trackies.

I can assure you that you would not make it through the door dressed like that – despite it being 12 foot wide. Joe’s is actually a subtle and beautiful restaurant. A book case runs through the centre, punctuated with the occasional 50-year-old bottle of wine or Vogue collection from the 80s.

The tables are spread out and the service relaxed. Money here is made slowly, in stark contrast to its Kensington clientele. We ummed and erred over the wine list, starters and mains. Even deciding between sparkling and still water took five minutes, during which our tireless waiter looked busy at the table behind us.

I started with fois gras on a mushroom wafer topped with sour cherries. This was rather hard to eat, being unstab-able and too wide to balance on the fork. So by the time it reached my mouth it was more like sour cherries, topped with fois gras and mushroom pastry shards. Still, the dish was appreciated for its sweet and sourness, even if the texture was all together too watery.

For the main I had water trout (what other kind is there?) with a French tartare sauce and a cold salmon, almost sushi-esque roll with an horseradish base. To be honest it was felt foreign on the plate, distracting me from the wonderful trout and if I hadn’t been famished would have been left well alone. However, the course was served with the first truly tolerable form of fried cauliflower I have ever tasted, and all it took was the addition of lemongrass.

As is the case in all good restaurants, my memory of the pudding is a little hazy. We had finished a bottle of wine before even choosing our food. Nonetheless my pudding choice was inspired. My raspberry baseless cheese cake was sweet and decadent, and looked a lot like a maoam, a hallucination helped by the fact that it was surrounded by cubes of raspberry jelly. The rubber texture juxtaposed the maoam nicely, and bizarrely added a drier flavour to the very sweet dish.

And so we enjoyed a final bottle of wine after the meal, staring through the missing wall that Joe’s calls a door, at the torrential rain we had to head into. The food is nothing special here, but there is an honesty to it; a kind of aspiring decadence that it never quite lives up to. But in the quiet and welcoming room and with a hearty wine from the Alsace inside you, you’ll never want to leave.




126 Draycott Avenue, South Kensington, London, SW3 3AH
020 7225 2217