wilimmiatuiplillow
Langham Hilton
MUCH as it pains me to admit it, there are some things (motorways, television quiz shows, toothpaste) that the Americans do better than us. Americans have always been rather good at refurbishing hotels. Take a rundown city-centre Marriott or Four Seasons (but not, it must be said, an Algonquin), give it over to an American refurbisher and he'll usually hand you back a hotel which is neither intrusively modern nor so freshly antiqued as to be uncomfort- able. Would that the British could do the job as successfully.
The old Langham Hotel opposite Broad- casting House reappeared the other week as the Langham Hilton after a number of years behind the refurbisher's scaffolding. I wish I could tell you rather more about the process, but the woman charged by Hilton International to deal with its press coverage seems to have a professionally unfortunate aversion to talking to the press and got quite churlish when I suggested she might send me some details about the place. Instead she slammed the phone down.
You know those Radio 4 plays which are translated from the original Serbo-Croat and in which everyone speaks a language which, while certainly not being Serbo- Croat is not quite English either? The new Langham is the hotelier's equivalent. Someone has tried to translate a Victorian Gothic hotel into modern materials and the result is both discomforting and tacky. Thus where the real thing would have acres of deeply polished hardwoods, the Langham has acres of hardwood which looks as if it's been allowed a quick lick of Ronseal Matt. The brass which, in the sort of hotel the Langham wishes it was, would be burnished to a dark gleam looks pinchbeck-cheap and even the marble on the foyer floor which I'd guess might be the original thing, has been refurbished to an unnaturally sharp Mr Sheen finish.
The hotel seems redesigned for the sort of marketing manager who believes that the double-glazing company-sponsored marquee at Cheltenham is what the high life is all about. (Since the very appeal of the Langham is to snobbery, I make no apology for a snobbish response.) The main bar has been rechristened The Chuk- ka Bar. This, the cocktail menu tells me, is `a four-a-side stick and ball game, played on horseback' and around the bar lie clumps of sticks and balls just waiting for all the John Collier'd princelings to saddle up and gallop into Portland Place for a couple of practice swipes. In the corner sits an upright piano, electronically controlled, feebly playing away to itself. Around it stand knots of John Colliers who, having inspected the polo pictures filling the walls, watch the magic keys bounce up and down.
I thought we'd got over the food-as- status fixation in 1984, but apparently not: the Tsar's Room offers a smug menu of Russian and Iranian caviar, champagne and smoked salmon. I have nothing against caviar. In fact I love it, but with food that starts off as expensive as caviar does, I
refuse to add to the cost a restaurant mark-up. Anyway, this chi-chi little cubby- hole did not invite.
Nor, frankly, did the manically deco- rated Memories of Empire (makes you feel embarrassed to be English, doesn't it?) but I ate there all the same. Ate there and rued the day. For I had the most disgusting meal I've ever had in my life, including school food. I shall describe it briefly: it is enough to have had the experience without having to relive it.
A central table overlooked by some plaster of paris goddess and lined with trays of hors d'oeuvres has a certain Scandinavia-ish charm — curled humps of pickled herring, cubes, slices and shreds of salmon in various guises and dressings, spiky prawns and soft mousses. The prom- ise, however, is not realised on the plate. Eating it, I had the unpleasant sensation of being at a particularly desperate wedding breakfast in somewhere like Coventry. We also tried a supposedly edible basket filled with perfectly good Dublin Bay prawns ruined by a sauce which tasted as if its only ingredients were sugar, vinegar, warm water, red food colouring and corn- flour. I'm sure this wasn't actually the case, but what does it matter what went into it if the end result tasted as it was?
I cannot bear to recall any more, and you probably don't deserve it, either.
Dinner for two, three foul courses each, came to over £80. In fact, it was consider- ably more expensive for me as I had to take the friend who accompanied me to a good restaurant the next night by way of apology and recompense.
Nigella Lawson
Previous page
