Service please... back to old school as Savoy Grill reopens

12 April 2012

Its doors open on Monday after a three-year closure, and 11,500 diners have already booked tables. But today the Evening Standard was the first to sample the cuisine and decor of the refurbished Savoy Grill.

The restaurant where Churchill dined and chef Marcus Wareing won a Michelin star has finally been reborn, under the auspices of Gordon Ramsay, after long delays caused by the fraught renovation of the Savoy Hotel.

Initial impressions are good. The original floorplan and mirrors have been retained. But the dark wood panelling has been lightened with gold leaf, and the heavy lampshades replaced by crystal chandeliers.

My meal of lustrous baked egg cocotte with red wine sauce; a firm and flavoursome Dover sole lifted expertly off the bone; and Mandarin baked Alaska flambé, suggests a thoroughly modern kitchen with a respect for the past.

Classic dishes created at the Savoy such as omelette Arnold Bennett are on the menu.

Carnivorous captains of industry and old-school politicians will be delighted at the no-nonsense slabs of meat from the £12,000 Josper charcoal grill.

But there are lighter, modern dishes, and an emphasis on theatrical presentation in the dining room, from the daily roast on the gueridon trolley to the flaming Grand Marnier poured over my baked Alaska.

"We wanted to go back to the Twenties and Thirties heyday of the Grill Room, when it was as much about the buzz as it was about the food," says the Grill's new chef director Stuart Gillies, formerly of the Boxwood Café. Head chef Andy Cook is also an old Ramsay colleague.

Prices are hefty but not outrageous, reflecting the Grill's 1904 birth as a cheaper alternative to Auguste Escoffier's Savoy River Restaurant.

Starters range from £5.50 for soup to £140 for caviar. Mains hover around £25. While the hotel has an £18,900 bottle of champagne, there are wines by the glass here from £5.50.

Gordon Ramsay will be hoping the venue is a hit after his split from father-in-law and business partner Chris Hutcheson. It also emerged this week that Holli Ugalde, winner of his Hell's Kitchen USA TV show, would not be able to take up her prize of a job at the Savoy Grill after she was refused a work permit.

HISTORY OF THE SAVOY GRILL

When it opened in 1904 The Times described the Grill as "a place where people go for a modest luncheon without spending too much time or too much money".

Winston Churchill often took his wartime Cabinet to dine at the Grill, which also became a regular haunt of exiled leaders such as Charles de Gaulle and Jan Masaryk.

The taxi turnaround beside the Grill remains the only street in Britain where drivers are legally obliged to drive on the right.

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