A price too hard to swallow

I conducted a mass-observation survey - I asked a friend in the business - on why up-market hotel restaurants, which profit handsomely from selling rooms, are invariably so ludicrously expensive. "I don't know," was his answer.

He had joined us at Lanes in the Four Seasons Hotel, where I thought they were celebrating the white-asparagus season with a special menu. They weren't last Wednesday. They are now - until 12 June. I had also read an encouraging review of the cooking of executive chef Bernhard Mayer.

There was white asparagus on his menu of the day - a relative bargain at £35 for three courses - but salad of white asparagus with Black Forest ham and herb vinaigrette had its delicacy trampled by salty meat and far too much vinegar in the dressing.

Steamed white asparagus was also a choice in the set-price main course, served with new-season morels, sweet potato wonton and melted Gruyère cheese. It would probably have been a much better bet than the lemongrass-braised chicken breast with spiced beans, pickled ginger and sticky rice chosen, which featured a tired, flaccid piece of meat. Fruit salad, a " personal selection" from the dessert trolley, was bulked out by those huge strawberries that taste of nothing.

What seemed like an inescapable Asian influence on cooking last week is at Lanes even more apparent in the à la carte menu, where prices become laughable.

Let's say you choose two of the most expensive dishes, red snapper carpaccio with squid tempura, avocado and spicy lime juice at £19 followed by cucumber risotto with sautéed native lobster, wasabi and pink ginger at £34. You have clocked up £53 before even thinking about dessert or wine from an unimaginative and vigorously marked-up list. It is much too much, especially when the standards of preparation are so variable and sometimes so low.

While truffle-braised osso buco essence with steamed wontons was an excellent, sonorous soup, crunchy vegetables in rice paper with baked spinach-tofu wontons and pickled squash was a mishmash of strident, jarring tastes and hostile textures.

Salad of buffalo mozzarella and braised tomatoes with olive-Parmesan bruschetta (at £13.50!) was well-enough put together, but Wiener schnitzel with green asparagus and mashed potatoes was a grey slice of meat in a beige Jiffy bag of batter.

Roast rib of beef from the trolley was a fine piece of meat wrecked by the sort of gravy that I thought had gone out with Brown Windsor soup. The feeble cheese selection was served refrigerator cold. Impromptu karaoke broke out in the neighbouring bar where some customers sang flatly, "You make me feel like a nat-tew-ral woman", to the pianist's accompaniment. Great.

The dining room is comfortable, the service assiduous and, as in many luxury restaurants which don't quite know what to do about décor, there is a selection of coloured-glass artworks to look at, but if these prices are aimed at - and swallowed by - tourists and business travellers, what does it say to them about London?

Lanes Restaurant
Four Seasons Hotel, Hamilton Place, Park Lane, W1