I s it just me, or does everyone have a bit
of a problem warming to Gary Rhodes? I know, I know, all celebrity chefs have their annoying shortcomings: Jamie’s wet lips; Nigella’s sloppy eating habits (sucking her fingers, juices dribbling down chin); Delia’s full-on, aproned bossiness; Rick’s silly dog, Chalky; Ainsley’s just about everything. And Gary? There is just something quite chilly and rather sinister about him. It doesn’t help, I suppose, that as time goes on he looks more and more like Freddy Kruger, possibly via a spring onion, what with the stupid hair. I don’t know what I’d put down first, Rick’s silly dog or Gary’s stupid hair. Still, Gary is said to be a far, far better restaurant chef (his London restaurant, Rhodes 24, has a Michelin star) than TV personality, so I think it’s only fair to let the food do the talking, something I always recommend unless I’ve got PMT, in which case the food may talk, by all means, but I’ll only snap back and tell it to shut up.
Gary’s latest venture is Rhodes W1, a brasserie in the basement of the Cumberland Hotel. It’s not that new, actually, as it opened last summer along with the promise of an adjoining fine-dining restaurant — ‘set to entice you with a sensuous array of the finest food and drink’ — due, it was said, to open in the autumn. I thought I would hang on for the fine-dining restaurant, as fine dining is always fine with me, as are sensuous arrays, but there was no restaurant by the autumn. I checked again at Christmas and in the New Year. Nope, no restaurant yet. ‘It’s not finished,’ I kept being told. Well, being an extremely impatient person — I’m fully aware I shouldn’t rev at old ladies on zebra crossings just to gee them up, but come on, some of them are like snails — I figure I can’t wait any longer.
So to the Cumberland Hotel then, at Marble Arch. Now, the Cumberland Hotel used to be a bit of a bog-standard, dingy tourist trap for the kind of people who come to London on National Express coaches, buy crap on Oxford Street, go to The Phantom of the Opera, and then have a slap-up meal at Garfunkel’s and to hell with the expense because it’s not every day we come up to London, is it, Betty? The Cumberland even used to have a carvery. Not any more, though. It’s been revamped, and astoundingly so. In fact, in terms of makeovers, think Olive from On the Buses suddenly being transformed into Kate Moss. That’s how startling it is. The lobby is now a vast white space, the size of a an aircraft hangar, bathed in an eerie blue light and largely empty, aside from a waterfall trapped between glass panes and two or three lifesize bronzes of human figures. On the whole, I like quirky, modern hotels but this is just absurdly alienating. It’s like the White Cube gallery on steroids, and we all know how scary the White Cube is.
The brasserie is in the basement, a journey that tips you from that spooky, blue-bathed silence into almost total darkness and one hell of a racket. The lighting is dim, the decor is all wenge-wood gloom, and pop music is blaring. What kind of diner are they trying to attract? Not older people, surely, as we all hate bad light and loud music, but do younger people have this kind of money? And, if so, do they want to spend it dining at the top of Park Lane rather than at some trendy place in the City or the heart of the West End? Looking around, and noting quite a few families, I think they might be relying on hotel guests, particularly the sort who, arriving in a strange city, are a little too scared to venture out. And why not? I’m always much too scared to leave hotels in foreign cities. Over the years I have been to many foreign cities but I wouldn’t be able to tell you a single thing about them.
However, that said, the service is incredibly good from the off, friendly and efficient, and later, when I’m already eating but suddenly realise I must have some chips and must have some chips now, they are delivered almost instantly. Also, our waiter doesn’t gasp when I request tap water rather than mineral water, as I always do, tap water being just as watery as mineral water and free to boot. I have probably saved a lot of money over the years by requesting tap water.
Anyway, the menu thankfully is short, as I hate too much choice, and I don’t think ‘choice’ always means better, unlike most politicians. Gary is most famous for classic British dishes with a modern twist, so for starters, for example, there is pork and black pudding salad (£6.25) as well as eggs Benedict served with smoked salmon (£6), while mains include braised oxtail with mashed potato (£15.80) and Irish stew (£13.80). But, those aside, the menu then appears to veer all over the shop. Halibut véronique? Heavens, fish with grapes wasn’t nice the first time around. Wild mushroom and mozzarella pizza? Doesn’t sound like a classic British dish to me. All I’m saying is that it’s hard to figure out exactly what this place is trying to be.
So what? you might say, as long as the food is good. Is it? I decide to start with the chicken soup, on the grounds that I make the best chicken soup ever, and it will be interesting to compare. The soup is creamy, rather than a clear, Jewish-style broth, and is most peculiarly frothed. The taste isn’t as bad as I feared — the flavour is good and chickeny — but it is like spooning up a warm chicken milkshake, while the accompanying slices of toasted French bread are, alas, hard and stone-cold. My companion, meanwhile, describes her starter, a salad of asparagus, courgettes, fennel, hazelnuts and pink grapefruit with warm goat’s cheese (£6), as ‘nothing special, really quite Pizza Express’. And so it goes on. My main of salmon with leek and parmesan risotto and fried baby squid (£13.50) scores with the salmon (moist, perfectly cooked, not mucked about with) but not with the risotto and squid, both of which are tepid, at best. On the other hand, the chips I order belatedly do arrive wonderfully hot. Everything appears to be entirely hit or miss on the temperature front, while the cooking just doesn’t appear to have any real guts. It’s all a bit of a bland, chilly experience.
OK, my dessert is good (a sublime breadand-butter pudding, oozing custard, £5.50) but it’s not enough to save the day. I don’t think this place knows what it is doing, or why, or even who it is for. I don’t know if Gary ever cooks here but I suspect not. He probably helped to compile the menu and put his name to it, just as celebrity chefs will put their names to anything these days: frying pans, condiment shakers, kettles. It’ll be Chalky gravy boats next. But I do think the public know when they are being sold branded catering rather than the real thing, and I wonder not just about the ‘unfinished’ finefood restaurant but whether this place will survive. Still, you can’t say I wasn’t prepared to let the food do the talking. It’s just that it didn’t have much to say or, if it did, I didn’t hear it. The music was very, very loud.
Rhodes W1, Cumberland Hotel, Great Cumberland Place, London W1. Tel: 020 7479 3838.
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