Inside the London restaurant serving Michelin-starred chicken ice cream
Chicken ice cream and kipper custard? Sign me up! Says Adam Bloodworth, who ate at Brooklands London restaurant within the new Peninsula Hotel on Hyde Park Corner
As a Londoner, spending the night in one of the capital’s smartest hotels used to be a rare but justifiable treat. But in recent years it’s become the pursuit of only the most dedicated hedonists. If £600 used to be an expensive bed for the night, that figure has now become cheap, shouldered out of the way by rooms fetching upwards of two grand.
The Peninsula, which opened a year ago in a new position on Hyde Park Corner, is part of this new cohort of hotels normalising the grand-plus entry-level room. If that sounds like the pricing of a madman, there is one part of the new opening that CityAM recommends – and it has nothing to do with mattresses and pillows.
Upon arrival at The Peninsula, smooth through the lobby and take the lift to floor eight. There you’ll find Brooklands restaurant, named after the Surrey racetrack that was a meeting point for the British and French aviation industries.
‘Coronation Chicken ice cream shows how narrow-minded we are with our eating habits’
In Brooklands, it is far removed from the maddening decadence of the hotel’s grand entrance way, where young men circle around Lamborghinis with their camera phones and people eating afternoon tea costing £95 per person look bored stiff.
In Brooklands, there is purposeful invention. The first thing worth shouting about is the very good food, the second the interestingly designed bar-restaurant with new sight lines over Admiralty Arch and Hyde Park. The views justify a lunch over a dinner, and it was the type of Saturday afternoon where we felt we’d earned the right to dine from the very last scraps of the morning until it got dark, so we went for the tasting menu.
Celebrating their one-year anniversary, French chef Claude Bosi behind London restaurant institution Bibendum in South Kensington has changed very little to the menu, and this is because very little needs to change. He establishes his interest in experimenting with seasonal British cuisine via a rather overwhelming array of five or so introductory mouthful-sized dishes to kick-off the tasting menu, including a blisteringly memorable Coronation Chicken ice cream that shows how narrow-minded we are with our eating habits, as well as a dish with kipper custard (kipper custard!).
Onwards, to the sort of God-tier cheddar that could do serious harm to the arteries, with impossible creamy depth
Minds sufficiently expanded, and with the shape of Concorde above us in silver looking handsome against the preppy blue of the carpet, we sought higher culinary dimensions. It’s not all fiddly: three-day-aged monkfish was served in a decent wedge, richly elevated by the time spent hanging and by blanquette and Argan oil jus.
Dorset snails served without garlic sauce were a little soberingly snail-like without their white coats. Onwards to a superb cut of Lake District lamb and then the sort of God-tier cheddar that could do serious harm to the arteries, with an impossible creamy depth. Something chocolately came over for pud later in the bar where we’d been moved to by an agonisingly polite waiter after four hours in the restaurant.
There weren’t many dinner bookings so we aren’t sure why we needed to be moved from a table that wasn’t needed that evening, but were glad for the views and change of vibe. If Brooklands restaurant is for spenny work lunches (one waiter estimated fifteen per cent of guests are corporate) the bar is cosy and personal. Pictures of vintage cars and planes populate the walls and the slick silver aviation-themed fixtures and fittings bring the energy through from the restaurant. The restaurant knows it’s a fun place to be: a mach reader on the wall is the type of theatrical silliness that’s so thoughtful that you buy into it for the afternoon, accepting that part of the fun is pretending to be in some luxe First Class aeroplane lounge from the 1950s.
It really is good fun, and the fit clearly cost a bomb. The view is superb, too, both inside and out.
To book a table to go the Brooklands website
Read more: Alex Webb at Number One Park Lane: A thrillride of British flavours
Read more: The Aubrey review: Good vibes, but could feel more Japanese