So old-fashioned, it's a dream

Even when viewed among traditional hotels, there is a cultural inertia about The Connaught that is startling; it does things in a very, very old-fashioned way. I don't visit it all the time but, like watching a film starring Cary Grant, there are occasions when my mood dictates a spot of gastronomic time travel.

However, what surprises me is that for a Mayfair hotel dining room it seems to bring passions to the boil very quickly. Some people loathe it with a venom that is quite remarkable. I fear they visit it in search of a contemporary-restaurant experience and are disappointed. Maybe it is fashionable to give this sort of place a kicking.

The finger of fashion is notoriously fickle: one minute it is wagging in the direction of the shank-of-lamb-on-polenta of the gastropub, the next at the deep-fried-shallot-sprinkled puddings at Nahm. But The Connaught maintains a lofty dignity. To use an automotive analogy, while the Subarus and BMWs scrap it out at the traffic-lights grand prix, The Connaught is a Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud III: a little ponderous, perhaps ? no airbags, no sat nav, certainly no beverage-cup holders ? a little stuck-up, maybe, but bristling with regal presence and old-fashioned craftsmanship. The Connaught is anti-fashion, or maybe it is above fashion, or perhaps so far out of fashion that it will soon be in fashion again. For all I know, at this very moment Luella Bartley is booking her Christmas party there.

The evening I settled into my banquette in the window of the restaurant there was not a fashionista to be seen. There were three men who looked like an X Files case study. Hirsute, of considerable size and identical, all had gone to the same tailor in 1978 and asked for a sober suit and clashing tie of the sort favoured by Middle Eastern TV anchormen. They wore thick spectacles of the type associated with mild-mannered mass murderers, and laid into their food with commendable ferocity. The room was filled with no other remarkable specimens of humanity: no Posh or Kate, not a whisper of Sir Elton, nor a glimpse of that miracle of modern make-up Joan Collins. Once upon a time, all smart restaurants must have been like this: panelled cocoons with formal waiters, synchronised cloche-lifting, trolleys and fresh linen after the main course. This is the sort of place where it takes a team of about three tail-coated staff to serve a cup of tea.

There are few places left like The Connaught; actually, I can think of none. It is so entirely sui generis that I feel it ought to continue unmolested until the world comes to an end. The danger is that Michel Bourdin, who has run the kitchens since 1975, retires at the end of the year. However, Bourdin being Bourdin, this farewell is a three-month leave-taking, with three valedictory menus, of which the jewel has to be his tribute to the Royal Family.

Bourdin started work here two years before the Royal Jubilee and has plainly never recovered from this fierce burst of royalism. His tribute to the House of Windsor begins with homard d'Ecosse Reine Elizabeth, consomm? 'Prince of Wales', sole jubil?e, noisettes d'agneau du King Edward VII, and cr?pes souffl?es 'Royal Visit' (the Queen Mum's favourite Connaught pud). The sole jubil?e, created in 1977 and served in a pastry case decorated with a crown, is the best thing about The Connaught; served with a butter sauce, it captures the spirit of the age and the temperament of its creator much as a piece of vintage couture might encapsulate the house that made it.

As my companion, I selected a highly cultivated member of a distinguished French family. Halfway through his noisettes d'agneau, he remarked that this was the sort of food he had been served as a child. It is superior, elaborate French nursery food. Bourdin is an anachronism and proud of it. The food here is time-warp stuff, with names such as Oysters 'Christian Dior' and Fillet of Angus Beef 'Aristotle Onasis' (sic). When viewed from a contemporary perspective, the carte is confusingly old-fashioned; mixing the plain, smoked Wiltshire trout and Connaught chicken pie with the blatantly retrospective such as the supremes of teal 'Belle Epoque' and the self-referential Trifle 'Wally Ladd', named after a pastry chef who worked here from the Thirties to the Eighties. Moreover, pricing is steep, verging on the precipitous: Onassis's beef, for two, costs £45 a head, roast turbot the same, the Queen's lobster sneaks in just under £40, while a smoked-salmon starter is £22.

It makes me wonder how long this sort of idiosyncratic culinary indulgence can last, especially under the hotel's American owners.

The Grill Room
Carlos Place, London, W1K 2AL