Theo Randall at The InterContinental: Grand return of pasta master

Fay Maschler finds herself wondering once again why Theo Randall left The River Café for The InterContinental
Not-so-little Italy: Theo Randall at the InterContinental Hotel, Park Lane
Daniel Hambury
Fay Maschler31 January 2018

Unless you have an assignation with a new cookie and can afterwards slip straight up to a bedroom beadily booked beforehand, why would any Londoner want to eat in a hotel that is part of an international chain? And furthermore, why settle for a restaurant with no windows within a few leaps and bounds of Hyde Park?

When Theo Randall left The River Café beside the Thames after working there for 17 years — 10 of them as head chef — his decision to throw in his lot with The InterContinental Park Lane rather than launch an independent place of his own puzzled many of us who dwell on such things. Security we thought. A pension. Maybe a company car. All a bit humdrum for a notably personable chap who once took out a year to cook with Alice Waters at Chez Panisse in Berkeley, California, and who can name his favourite “fun and relaxed” places to eat in all the world in Alba and Verona.

Ten years on from that start in autumn 2006, with two books written and various Best This, Best That awards lobbed his way, Randall’s revamped restaurant with its new look and apparently embellished menu re-opened last week.

A bowl of Amalfi lemons do a successful turn at embodying sunshine on a table at the entrance. The dining area is lighter and brighter, with mirrors at both ends painted with tall, sparse blades of grass and overhead spots refracting light back from a pale grey and white terrazzo floor. Tables are now bare wood — how the hotel bean counters must be rubbing their hands with glee at ameliorated laundry costs — but still widely spaced for privacy or, on one of the occasions I was there, someone communing with a speakerphone.

Disappointingly lacking precision: Wood-roasted guinea fowl stuffed with prosciutto thyme, lemon zest and mascarpone Daniel Hambury/Stella Pictures
Daniel Hambury/Stella Pictures

Ten years on, “named” ingredients have less leverage. Taggiasca olives, Lamon borlotti beans, Castelluccio lentils — those little devils insinuate themselves all over the place on Randall’s menu — Volpaia vinegar, pecorino di Pienza and so forth are not the arcane, magical invocations they perhaps once were. Obtaining fine raw materials has become commonplace among enlightened chefs and restaurateurs and geographical boundaries now fruitfully blur.

Restaurants as varied (and enticing) as Bocca di Lupo, Lurra, Brunswick House Café, Portland, Newman Arms, Noble Rot, Kitty Fisher’s and Frenchie — to name just a few — all procure pristine produce and treat it mindfully, the approach that The River Café espoused to astonished acclaim nearly 30 years ago.

Lunch begins with focaccia, cherry tomato bruschetta and little chips of deep-fried courgette brought unbidden to the table. Over two lunches the little tomatoes will become dear friends. I prefer zucchini fritti made into a spindly tangle. They are more amusing and less filling that way.

Generous, rich, lingering, buttery: Taglierini con gamberetti e carciofi Daniel Hambury/Stella Pictures
Daniel Hambury/Stella Pictures

My companion is a firm fan of Randall’s pasta cooking and taglierini con gamberetti e carciofi proves her faith well founded. It is generous, rich, lingering, buttery, wound into a perfect mound and clever with the riff of textures. “If I weren’t hard up,” she says, “I might come back for a pasta dish followed by risotto.”

My choice of tortellini the second time I visit isn’t such a transporting experience. Little parcels filled with sheep’s ricotta have the waxy edges that come from too long sitting around before being simmered. Cream and Parmesan is the sauce, as it is for sformato di fontina, a nervous little soufflé that costs £11. Perigord black truffle is suggested as a supplement. “I’m glad I didn’t have it,” says the soufflé eater after finishing. “I think all it would have added is eight quid to the bill.”

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Wood-roasted guinea fowl stuffed with prosciutto thyme, lemon zest and mascarpone tweets out to me as a dish that might have flown unimpeded from The River Café but disappointingly it lacks anticipated precision in the cooking, any trace of wood-fired oven and the meat is masked in a creamy gravy. And where is it springtime for the advertised “new season” peas? “Guatemala?” offers my chum. Roasted wild salmon trout with slow-cooked fennel is preferred to fillet of line-caught sea bass in a buttery sauce served with those lentils and Swiss chard, which is information arguably useful to retain as at £20 it is considerably cheaper than the £34 bass. Amalfi lemon tart doesn’t sing. Clementine sorbet is simple and lovely and a bargain £5 plus 12.5 per cent.

“Five-star hotel eating costs a lot” is not breaking news but even an attempt to take advantage of a re-opening offer — Hot Dinners’ 50 per cent off food cost offer (no longer applicable) — is thwarted first by no response to the booking and then the full amount being charged, amended after protest. Add to that prices to make you wince for wine by the 125ml glass, however well chosen, and you wonder anew what was behind Randall’s decision.

Lunch Mon-Fri noon-3pm. Dinner Mon-Sat 6pm-11pm. A meal for two with wine, about £200 incl 12.5 per cent service.

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