8 Pall Mall, London SW1Y 5NG www.thebalconlondon.com
So what with that and my experience of hotel restaurants in general, I wasn’t holding out too much hope for anything special at The Balcon on this humid evening.
We’re seated next to some rather old-school businessmen, the kind who have a Jaguar in the drive of their home in Weybridge with a set golf clubs in the boot. These are loudly discussing Brexit and seemed pretty united in their desire to get Britain’back on its feet again’ by pulling up the drawbridge. Of course they are not against French food.
Ignoring them and looking around it’s clear the Grade II listed room is still gorgeous, the high ceilings giving a good Parisian feel to the place and, as it was reasonably busy, it had a good atmosphere.
Chef Matt Greenwood is in charge now and his Asia-Pacific influences on French cooking are obvious in the new spring menu with dishes such as Pork cheek and shiitake dumpling, pickled mushrooms, mange tout and sesame salad and Yuzu cured salmon with edamame purée, wakame salad, tobiko on the starters.
Roasted hake, English asparagus, smoked mash, prosciutto, romesco sauce is another winner with a large meaty piece of hake perched on a lattice of asparagus over the smoked mash with the prosciutto hiding coyly underneath. On top is a jaunty bonnet of romanesco. It all plays together perfectly, even though I felt the very centre of the hake was perhaps a tad underdone. Very morerish cooking, structured but not prissy. Just what I like to eat.
But then came dessert, which I have to say is disappointing after such class starters and mains. The desserts seem tired, like they’ve been hanging about waiting for a customer. Not bad, but not in the same league as the dishes before. Creme caramel with Pedro Ximenez infused prunes is not as exciting as it sounds, and not much evidence of that sticky, treacly sherry either, and a rhubarb dish is simply dry and exhausted and P is disinclined to finish it.
If Balcon can just up the standard of those desserts, make the execution match up to the conception, I’d say they’d be a real destination restaurant and not simply a’hotel restaurant’. The cooking is much, much better than that.