Five star food, five star service and five star prices at festive time. Also a five star central location, Oxford Circus. So convenient. Great place for meeting friends, especially if you are all coming from different directions. The hotel has somebody to greet you at the entrance. Elegant art deco foyer.
Separate side entrance for the restaurant. That's good if a side entrance makes you feel exclusive, discreet. Equally suitable if you are shy and retiring and the big main marble hotel entrance and bustling hallway inhibits you.
Your coat and hat and bag or newspaper are taken and hidden in their cupboard behind a door at the back of the reception desk. You are given a solid tag, black, thick, looks like a leather credit card. Good. You can feel it in your pocket and find it. Not like those flimsy raffle tickets which disappear down the hole in your pocket to reappear in the lining of your coat years later - after somebody else has made off with your identical coat, but the wrong size.
The corridor is lined with drinks cabinets.
One person was early and presumably did not want to wait in the bar. He was in the side room. We joined him and had pre-dinner drinks in the side room which I had previously glimpsed with a grand table laid for a private dinner party. We were only five in number and had not asked for a private room, so this was a treat.
I was dehydrating after half a glass of alcohol. And not my usual voluble self. The brain needed lubricating.
I asked for tap water with lemon. They brought a jug of water with lemon. And not just a glass for me but a glass for everybody, lemon slice in each glass. Yes, that's how it should be, but some places think you are the only person who might want water.
Our group organiser - I won't call him the host because we were all paying for ourselves, asked for nuts or nibbles to go with the wine. Although I feel they should have produced both water and nuts without being asked, the coated nuts arrived almost instantly and shortly afterwards two slates supposing canapés, with a side table each side so we did not have to keep passing the canapés, nor risk one person hogging the lot.
Starter
On to the table, a round table for five. I had to reject the two items containing shellfish in case I am still allergic to them after a nasty experience some years back. That left a choice of soup; or boudin blanc. What's the boudin, I asked. I must have been told some time in my life, but so long ago that I'd forgotten.
Boudin is a sausage. Sausages are in my mental column of preserved meats which are always second choice after fresh meat with nothing added, nothing taken away. Interrogation of the server reveals that the sausage contains chicken - OK. But also pork.
Those of us who were taught at school in either biology or domestic science that pork contains tape worms have never got over this early conditioning. (I have visions of myself retreating with a fixed smile, looking for the door to escape. A good thing I don't like red wine and am not drinking any more.)
So my choice is soup. The soup plate arrives with something small and colourful in the middle. I never quite get over the disappointment of thinking my starter is too small.
A moment later the cream colour soup is poured around it like a sauce, a moat. A delightful drama. Perhaps I should have been told that the soup was to follow, or given some clue.
Beside the salad plate is a side plate of piquant cheese canapés. Excellent.
Main course
Turkey. Potatoes six stars! Supposed to be with sprouts Where are the sprouts? What happened to by five a day vegetables. Ah, sprouts are hidden under the turkey. You need an instruction book for this lunch. It's the food equivalent of an IKEA catalogue. Scientists, men like working it out from the menu. I'm a woman. I like a waiter explaining it to me.
OK - found the sprouts under the turkey. I'm still trying to count my five a day. I suppose a vegetable soup is one vegetable, sprouts makes two. At lunch time I do like meat and two vegetables.
How about a sigh of some salad, fresh salad? Not everybody at my table agrees. Those sitting either side of me have differing views. My companions are mixture of health freaks and lettuce-phobics.
Dessert
I've had Christmas pudding about three times already in the past fortnight so this time I forego my favourite seasonal dish for the chestnut dessert. The presentation is amazing. The little morsels of meringue stand on fat stalks and look like miniature mushrooms or bar stools for The Borrowers.
Coffee
The Wedgwood cups and milk jugs are perfect.
Price. Shock. Twelve and a half per cent is a lot.
This was our second visit and we'd been so looking forward to it. At that price I would expect something really gaspingly exciting every moment, not just flavour, but also visually, with contrasting colours.
rouxatthelandau.com
http://london.langhamhotels.co.uk/restaurants/fine_dining_restaurants.htm
Separate side entrance for the restaurant. That's good if a side entrance makes you feel exclusive, discreet. Equally suitable if you are shy and retiring and the big main marble hotel entrance and bustling hallway inhibits you.
Your coat and hat and bag or newspaper are taken and hidden in their cupboard behind a door at the back of the reception desk. You are given a solid tag, black, thick, looks like a leather credit card. Good. You can feel it in your pocket and find it. Not like those flimsy raffle tickets which disappear down the hole in your pocket to reappear in the lining of your coat years later - after somebody else has made off with your identical coat, but the wrong size.
One person was early and presumably did not want to wait in the bar. He was in the side room. We joined him and had pre-dinner drinks in the side room which I had previously glimpsed with a grand table laid for a private dinner party. We were only five in number and had not asked for a private room, so this was a treat.
I was dehydrating after half a glass of alcohol. And not my usual voluble self. The brain needed lubricating.
I asked for tap water with lemon. They brought a jug of water with lemon. And not just a glass for me but a glass for everybody, lemon slice in each glass. Yes, that's how it should be, but some places think you are the only person who might want water.
Our group organiser - I won't call him the host because we were all paying for ourselves, asked for nuts or nibbles to go with the wine. Although I feel they should have produced both water and nuts without being asked, the coated nuts arrived almost instantly and shortly afterwards two slates supposing canapés, with a side table each side so we did not have to keep passing the canapés, nor risk one person hogging the lot.
Starter
On to the table, a round table for five. I had to reject the two items containing shellfish in case I am still allergic to them after a nasty experience some years back. That left a choice of soup; or boudin blanc. What's the boudin, I asked. I must have been told some time in my life, but so long ago that I'd forgotten.
Boudin is a sausage. Sausages are in my mental column of preserved meats which are always second choice after fresh meat with nothing added, nothing taken away. Interrogation of the server reveals that the sausage contains chicken - OK. But also pork.
Those of us who were taught at school in either biology or domestic science that pork contains tape worms have never got over this early conditioning. (I have visions of myself retreating with a fixed smile, looking for the door to escape. A good thing I don't like red wine and am not drinking any more.)
So my choice is soup. The soup plate arrives with something small and colourful in the middle. I never quite get over the disappointment of thinking my starter is too small.
A moment later the cream colour soup is poured around it like a sauce, a moat. A delightful drama. Perhaps I should have been told that the soup was to follow, or given some clue.
Beside the salad plate is a side plate of piquant cheese canapés. Excellent.
Main course
Turkey. Potatoes six stars! Supposed to be with sprouts Where are the sprouts? What happened to by five a day vegetables. Ah, sprouts are hidden under the turkey. You need an instruction book for this lunch. It's the food equivalent of an IKEA catalogue. Scientists, men like working it out from the menu. I'm a woman. I like a waiter explaining it to me.
OK - found the sprouts under the turkey. I'm still trying to count my five a day. I suppose a vegetable soup is one vegetable, sprouts makes two. At lunch time I do like meat and two vegetables.
How about a sigh of some salad, fresh salad? Not everybody at my table agrees. Those sitting either side of me have differing views. My companions are mixture of health freaks and lettuce-phobics.
Dessert
I've had Christmas pudding about three times already in the past fortnight so this time I forego my favourite seasonal dish for the chestnut dessert. The presentation is amazing. The little morsels of meringue stand on fat stalks and look like miniature mushrooms or bar stools for The Borrowers.
The Wedgwood cups and milk jugs are perfect.
Price. Shock. Twelve and a half per cent is a lot.
rouxatthelandau.com
http://london.langhamhotels.co.uk/restaurants/fine_dining_restaurants.htm
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