English breakfast

Approachable luxury at one of London’s best addresses!’ proclaim a competing hotel’s billboards as you walk down Park Lane towards the Dorchester. ‘Approachable’ seems a good tack to take, since ‘affordable’ can hardly be allowed to oxymoronify ‘luxury’. Indeed, there are plenty of clues that you are not only approaching luxury but already engulfed by it as you pass the Aston Martin, the Corvette and Cadillac, and then the huge upper-end BMW showrooms. The day is beautiful, sunny at the moment, but promising proper summer heat later. The Dorchester is undergoing refurbishment and has its own billboard over a side-entrance being renovated. In the picture, there’s a bald man in chef kit and he seems to be dragging himself away from a pretty woman in a flimsy evening dress who has draped herself around one of his knees; the text says: “Aiden Byrne is now at The Grill. And yes, he is proving rather popular.”

The woman who greets and seats us at The Grill resembles neither the study and popular Aiden nor the red evening-dressed socialite. She and the rest of the staff are soberly dressed and discreetly attentive, their French, German and Spanish accents handling the English more than competently. The place itself provides a weird contrast to the bright sunshine outside. It was probably dark to start with, one of those typically English, posh, eatery-wombs where one could shut out the cares of estate and Empire and concentrate on copious drink and perfectly underdone meat, where the walls around one corner table might have been given a particular patina by Churchill’s cigars as he fulminated in the Opposition, while the table diagonally across the room may have seen a Bertie Wooster, cowering behind a large roast in case one of his dreaded Aunts chose the same place for luncheon.

“Why,” old Winston might have growled at a waiter, “Are these huge Scots fellows looking down at me? Remove them! They are curdling my brandy!” Not being Churchill, I order my fresh grapefruit juice and quietly take in the floor-to-ceiling murals of kilted blokes posing on precarious mountainsides, every man-Duncan of them clearly gay, the faux-aged brown and ochre painting juxtaposed with bright red banquets and the crispest of white table-linen. Obviously, the designer was given the task of being simultaneously nostalgic and modern, and did his best to make a manful fist of redecorating the old cave. It has to be said the result achieves mixed success: the chandeliers, the large vats full of (what looks like) fresh flowers, the bright gilt and plaster curlicues, all lift, while the murals and the almost complete absence of natural light weigh the space down. This might be a perfect joint for a dinner, or a long winter lunch while the light was even darker outside, but breakfast in spring?

These thoughts all disappear once the food starts arriving. The croissants and other bread may or may not be baked in-house, but they are very good. Whereas other pretenders to the podium of British Nostalgia might serve the same tiny bottles of jam and honey you get in any semi-decent B&B across the Isles, the Dorch does its own line and very nice it is too, with the jams including apricot with lavender leaf, ‘summer pudding’ and acacia honey.

Following the bread, my companion takes the Health Breakfast route. This brings her as a first course Raspberry Porridge, i.e., a lake of very fine porridge with an island of fresh raspies and mint in the centre, all great, too good, for lowering cholesterol and therefore countered with a stylish ring of fresh cream to keep some of the happy health-effects at bay. While praising the cereal, Companion tastes the regular tea she’s been served and wrinkles her nose, “Lekin yeh angrez aisi hi chai piitey hain, kya karein?” “Get Darjeeling at once!” I say, and she does. When it comes, even that is not top-notch Darj, but, for a non-tea-drinker like me, the 1930s style pewter teapot and strainer look damn nice.

My own main course, the Grill English Breakfast, arrives promptly, with the toasts being vigilantly replaced by a new stack of warm ones. On the plate, all the usual suspects are correct and present, but they have been rounded up nicely. This is a classic big English breaker, but done with style and not a little substance: the scrambled eggs are good, the sausage is a Denham Estate Rare Breed banger and it tastes suitably meaty rather than too cereal-y, the bacon is from Ayrshire and it tastes lovely—God bless Ayrshire, wherever it lies. Both the black and the white puddings are scrumptious. The white is quite spicy and almost chilli-hot, while the black tastes like a rich blood-halwa infused with cloves. Even the grilled tomato tastes of tomato, a rarity in English Breakfasts of all price ranges.

Comprising the second offering on the Health menu comes an omelette that has clearly been made after sacrificing the yolks of several high-quality eggs and keeping only their whites. It is superb. Her lamb kidneys, when they follow, again come with perfectly fried eggs. The kidneys are cooked with verve, with just a tiny bit of red inside as there should be, and completely done but no over-cooking outside.

Satiated, I ask for my coffee — a latte with a double shot of espresso. It comes and it’s good, much better than both the teas served, in fact, which is surprising for a British institution. That, and no serious fruit on offer could be two minor quibbles. But never mind, the staff are a very nice trans-European bunch, irascible Latin-ish headwaiter included (irascible not to us, it has to be said, but to his service soldiers), and if you forget the walls (think of Winnie’s ghost smoking cheroot all over them in the night), then the detail on the table itself is wonderful.

At the end you visit the Gents and check out the photographs of the hotel with its glass front plate windows sandbagged during the Blitz. Then you head out into the sunshine, exchanging greetings with the liveried (but clearly unliverish) doorman flanked by his parked Rollses and Bentleys, back up towards Oxford Street, once more under the billboard with a parting salute to the unchecked out Aiden Byrne with the red Ladyship still beseeching him for an amuse bouche if not an entrée, and out into one of the last days of Blair-Britain, mostly cool, occasionally tacky Britannia but all very satisfyingly expensive.

The Grill, The Dorchester Hotel, Park Lane, London W1K 1QA; +44-20-7629-8888, Breakfast for two: £60-70