The Piccadilly restaurant combines plush and playful.
There are just 13 restaurants in London that have been awarded two Michelin stars. And only one of them achieved this rare distinction just six months after opening.
Alex Dilling’s overnight success has been two decades in the making. He trained under the great French chef Alain Ducasse in New York, then won a Michelin star at Caviar Russe. He was lured back to London to The Connaught under Hélène Darroze before taking over at the Glasshouse, where he retained its existing double-star status. The latter’s closure during lockdown gave him the opportunity to rethink and reset and, in 2022, Alex Dilling at Hotel Café Royal was born.
To walk through the revolving doors, just a stone’s throw from Piccadilly Circus, is to step back in time 160 years. The marbled walls and decorative plasterwork ceiling in this Grade II listed building echo with its gilded past as a French restaurant and meeting place for movers and shakers – where Oscar Wilde traded witticisms with the American painter James McNeill Whistler, and a century later Lou Reed, David Bowie and Mick Jagger were snapped together at a Ziggy Stardust farewell party.
It’s a lot to live up to, and Dilling doesn’t disappoint. His cooking may have got the moves like Jagger, but thankfully none of the swagger. This is not showboating, attention-grabbing cuisine. There is no sea foam or bizarre taste combinations. This is simply classic French cuisine refined to the level – and appearance – of high art.
The Chef's Tasting Menu offers an exciting entry into his cuisine. One of my favourite dishes from the menu, which changes frequently, was the usually humble Pâté De Campagne: on this night presented as two tiny cubes interlacing meat, boudin noir and foie gras. It’s served with what looks at first like a sea shell – in fact a croissant perfectly striped from charcoal grilling, with a zingy crunch to the exterior (many of Dilling’s dishes play with mouthfeel, adding an element of crunch to softness). To accompany the two, a rose of pickled cucumber and a dollop of honey mustard.
Eating it is a joy – not just for the perfect balance of flavours, but because tearing off a bite of croissant with your fingers breaks through the formality associated with most fine dining and instills a playful, sociable vibe early in the meal.
The signature Dilling dish is the Hunter Chicken, which is a breast wrapped in mushroom Duxelles, and wrapped again in a mousseline of chicken and Alsace lardons. When this is glazed in chicken jus, caramelised, and studded with bee pollen and thyme, it looks like some glittering jewel.
There were many other standouts at Alex Dilling at Hotel Café Royal, from the amuse-gueules including a sea bream tartare on a rich rouille with a crunchy potato tuille, right up to the sourdough ice cream with caramel on Guanaja 70 per cent chocolate. But Dilling is not a chef to rest on his laurels. He often roams the 34-capacity dining room after the final course, shaking hands and sharing a few words; tall, focused, energetic and charming.
After recommending to him a MICHELIN-Starred establishment in Croatia, where he’s thinking of holidaying, I tell him I’ve never before had red gurnard, which he served with courgette, basil and Gamberoni prawn. “That’s why I chose it,” he says. “Everyone has the same fish. You get so bored of seeing it. I wanted to do something different, and it’s a really lovely fish with a distinctive taste.”
It also gave Giuseppe, the brilliant sommelier, a chance to upend tradition in his wine choice (do choose the wine pairing option – it’s an education). “Red wine with fish? That should have told me something,” James Bond sneers in From Russia With Love, when a culinarily naïve spy is unmasked. Yet Giuseppe’s St. Francis zinfandel from Sonoma County, with its undercurrents of ripe blackberry, black plum and vanilla, makes the perfect complement to this firm-textured fish – though he admits Dilling took some persuading that it would work!
In fact, there’s nothing that doesn’t work in this extraordinary meal in an extraordinary setting. Traditional it may be, but with a twist – and there’s nothing stuffy about it.
GO: Visit alexdilling.com for reservations and more information.