A good old fashioned grilling

Turning the tables: Chef Lee Streeton at The Grill aims to bring back the finest-quality British hotel cooking
10 April 2012

On the swings and roundabouts in the restaurant fairground Richard Caring's loss has been Rocco Forte's gain. After Caring bought Caprice Holdings, which includes Le Caprice, The Ivy, J Sheekey, Daphne's and Scott's, its chef-director, Mark Hix, decided to go his own way.

The self-explanatory Hix Oyster and Chop House is scheduled to open late next month in Smithfield on the site that was Rudland & Stubbs. Meanwhile, Hix has been masterminding the menu at The Grill at Brown's Hotel, part of the Rocco Forte Collection.

When The Grill opened towards the end of 2006 on completion of the hotel's renovation, all the chatter was about how Angelo Maresca, formerly maitre d' at The Savoy Grill,was coming to Brown's.

It was assumed he would be followed by droves of his loyal regulars and that silver trolleys bearing roast saddle of lamb would be safe in his hands. After that excitement died down, no one talked particularly enthusiastically about the food.

Signor Maresca has gone to his well-deserved retirement and Lee Streeton, a chef who worked for Hix at Daphne's, is now running the kitchen.

The menu is very Hixy, meaning British ingredients carefully tracked down and prepared in a manner that suits their soul. The overall aim, it has been said, is to bring back the traditional hotel grill.

What immediately caught my eye were the variations and gradations in the new menu pricing. Usually in a five-star hotel, however cannily you structure your meal it adds up to more or less the same very considerable sum of money.

Charitably you could think that space between tables, battalions of waiters, quality of linen, delicacy of glassware and so forth all have to be paid for.

But at The Grill (soon to be relaunched as The Albemarle Grill) you could do as I did and make a main course of (excellent) kedgeree at £11.50 or, indeed, select a dish from under the heading Eggs such as fried egg - a Mabel Pearson Burford Brown - with baby squid and black pudding for £8.75. On the other hand, six West Mersea Natives would set you back £19.75 and a grilled Dover sole £29.50 with £4.25 need for creamed spinach on the side. When I saw Brown Windsor soup on offer I thought the new "director of food" was indulging in a spot of irony.

After all, this Edwardian fuel was on the menu at Fawlty Towers. And irony was the kindest comment I could have made about the Brown Windsor at Gordon Ramsay's gastropub The Devonshire. Here, it was a fabulous soup-plateful of meatiness with a back story of pot vegetables mercifully neither puréed nor rubbed through a sieve but served as an empire-building nubbly broth, rich and glossy as gravy.

Chicken livers on toast with chanterelles was less transporting. A shorter time frying would have improved the livers. Under the heading Pies, Hot-Pots and Braises was Lancashire hot-pot and my Yorkshire-born husband seized the challenge. (Reg could have had Blackface mutton and turnip pie or beef short ribs with mashed neeps.)

My Scottish-born mother used to make a brilliant Lancashire hot-pot where the slices of potato on top absorbed the lamby-carroty juices and magically grew waxy, crisp and browned at the edges even though they were under the lid of a blue pottery dish.

Here, in a red cast-iron casserole the same effect had been achieved and the cooking liquid enriched with lamb's kidneys, those organs so willing to give of themselves. The astringency of lightly pickled red cabbage served alongside was perfect.

For dessert Reg chose ginger parkin (often associated with Yorkshire) with vanilla ice-cream. As he laid down his spoon, he remarked with evident approval: "I could have eaten this meal 50 years ago." Maybe, but the cooking would not have been so accomplished nor the surroundings so congenial and service would certainly have been stiffer.

Olga Polizzi, sister of Rocco Forte, has rendered the oak-panelled dining room with its vaulted ceiling comfortable, gentle and surreptitiously sexy.

The decision to use gritty photographic montages on glass by one Hubertus von Hohenlohe, presumably in order to introduce some urban consciousness, is a questionable one, but perhaps Mark Hix will move in contributions from his MBA (Modern British Artist) friends, as is his wont.

The artwork that is the trolley is wheeled out at lunchtime with a different dish for each day of the week. Clang, clang, clang goes the trolley - zing, zing, zing go my heartstrings - when I see Friday's hay-baked leg of lamb and Saturday's Loomswood Farm roast duck with blood-orange sauce.

Albermarle
Albemarle Street, London, W1S 4BP

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