Claridge's embraces the future

This review was first published in November 2000

I feel considerable affection for Claridge's. It has a Barbara Cartland quality that should be prized, but like so much in our brave new 21st-century country it does not get the recognition it deserves.

The times they are a changing, and Claridge's - yes, even Claridge's - has to move with them. The David Collins-designed bar was the first move to modernity. It used to be a charming buffet restaurant that seemed to have leapt straight from the pages of a Nancy Mitford novel. It was many things, but on-message was not one of them and it had to go. The bar that replaces it is very nice, very David Collins, is always busy, and attracts such fashionable folk as the man from Voyage, the fashion director of GQ and Dan Macmillan. I rather like it too.

But the lobby? I thought that was sacrosanct, rather like the dome of St Paul's or the gothic facade of the Houses of Parliament. That at least they could never change. Wrong.

About six months ago, I got a call from a nice if rather energetic American woman from the Claridge's press office. This in itself was a most un-Claridge's approach. She told me in quite excited terms about a man whose name sounded like Terry Despond, who was redecorating the lobby. I replied that Mr Despond sounded like he belonged in a novel by John Bunyan, and that they really ought not to meddle with the lobby. The lobby was a little bit of Ruritania in modern London. The service was impeccable; moreover, it was one of the few places where you got Battenberg cake for tea, and where the sound of Old Vienna was pumped out by velvet-knickerbockered musicians. It was the ultimate refuge ? but not any more.

Mr Despond has done a nice enough job: a vast, Medusa-like chandelier of Venetian glass hovers ominously above the space, and chairs upholstered in authentic-looking Art Deco fabrics bring a touch of the jazz age. It is a good job. But is it a job that really needed doing? I don't know.

But one thing I did know was that I had to get into the dining-room at Claridge's before that nice American woman gave me a call to say that some weird-sounding decorator had been employed to give the restaurant the once-over.

The restaurant is a masterpiece of untouched Deco - if I were English Heritage, I would slap preservation orders on everything, insisting that no decorator be allowed to alter one thing. The palette is peachy pink, with plenty of reflective glass to brighten things up.

Top table appeared to be a delightful little alcove in which were seated numerous American women who looked as if they had gone to the plastic surgeon with a picture of Nancy Reagan and said, 'Make me look like this.' After a certain age, cosmetic surgery is no longer capable of making you look young; it just makes you look your age, albeit in a tauter way - these women had reached that stage.

We were shown to a table at the back, facing a mirror that depicted a quasi-classical scene with Romanesque figures dancing amid Piranesi-style ruins. As we were seated and given our menus, I could not help feeling a sense of occasion: rather as if we were at the Royal Opera House or at the first night of a West End play.

After an amuse gueule, a bit of potato salad and tips of asparagus - most tasty - Mrs Foulkes decided on the extravagantly complex starter of smoked salmon with blinis. What is so wonderful about Claridge's is that they can imbue such a dish with a sense of grandeur. A side of salmon was brought to the table and carved with considerable aplomb, the sharp knife slicing gravely through the flesh. And then at the very moment the salmon carver placed these almost translucent slices of salmon on the table, my own starter - a potato salad with truffled lobster - arrived sous cloche. It was a perfectly choreographed start to the dinner.

My starter was excellent, the lobster flesh intersticed with generous slices of truffle. A main of magret of canard and duck leg accompanied with morello cherries, one of those dishes you don't see too much of these days, was correctly prepared and presented. And my generous tranche of seabass with olives and tomatoes showed that the Claridge's brigade can do modern Mediterranean if it wants.