Cooled-Down Hot Spots, a Joy of August
by Zoe Strimpel
Mon, 1 Sep 2008 at 4:15 PM
The dog days of summer are drawing to a close, and the European holiday season — most if not all of August — is over. Today people trickled back into the city, and tube trains were full again with suits and briefcases, not just sweaty families.
August was pretty boring. But one good thing about it was getting into places the tourists won't go but that would normally be out of reach. One such was the new talk-of-the-town restaurant, Hélène Darroze at the Connaught, helmed by two-Michelin-starred-single-mother-darling-of-Paris Ms. Darroze, at one of London's fanciest hotels, the Connaught. And, boy, is her restaurant fancy. The hotel underwent a £70 million ($126.1 million) refurbishment recently, and no efforts were spared in upgrading the dining room and the Coburg Bar next door.
Sitting atop throne-like silk banquettes and chairs, with an exquisitely ornate ceiling above and gleaming wall paneling around us, I thanked God it was August and I could get a table. And, man, was it good, if super-fancy French is your bag. Even if it isn't, everything — no matter how fancy-shmancy (it all was fancy-shmancy) — was heaven. Delights included a kind of caviar martini: oyster "tartare" at the bottom, black jelly of oyster next, haricot cream and a garnish of caviar and gold leaf on top. There was lobster, pork three ways (sounds dirty, eh?), and desserts such as panna cotta with almond crumble to die for.
The reviews have been trickling in, all positive — astounded, in fact — apart from those from the characters Giles Coren and Adrian Gill of London's Times and Sunday Times, respectively. They called it awful. Such a verdict, surely, can only be a sign of too many years of restaurant reviewing. A few too many veloutés, consommés, and tartares, no doubt.
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