Top of the world chez Jones

This review was published in August 2002

Peter Jones is a much-cherished national institution that, until recently, has been in need of a little care and attention. Eating in the top-floor restaurant overlooking Sloane Square was once an entertaining ordeal with staff who seemed a hybrid of Rosa Kleb and public-school matrons. The inmates of the Gulag archipelago might have recognised it as a restaurant; the rest of us did not.

Now known simply as 'The Top Floor', the catering arrangements have been dragged into the present. Rather sensibly, the 'partners' haven't gone for a full-on gastro spectacular in the vein of the Fifth Floor at Harvey Nicks.

Instead, we have a hybrid of a self-service canteen and Pret A Manger, what I believe the catering circle calls an 'assisted service' restaurant. Sadly, instead of Sloane Square, you now look out over the rooftops of Cadogan Gardens and on to Knightsbridge. But otherwise, things are greatly improved. It's big, airy, and flooded with light from the plate-glass windows and panels above the light well.

It is a pleasant space in which to sip a coffee and nibble a pastry. The bright, na?ve art is sufficiently banal as to be entirely unobtrusive.

The old dragons who used to patrol the tables have been replaced by young, helpful staff. Service at the counters is friendly, and sandwiches, like the one of Italian air-dried beef my wife ate, are a nice idea; sadly, the bread on ours was a little chilly and stale.

Some dishes are cooked to order and, from a small selection, we chose an adequate slab of tuna on a small pile of tagliatelle, which had been dressed with some of the constituents of a salade ni?oise. Fruit salad was up to local health-club standards, apple pie almost as good as Mom's, and coffees easily match Starbucks' offerings.

The restaurant at Peter Jones doesn't try to offer anything more than appetising sustenance to weary shoppers. More importantly, the revamp doesn't seem to have scared the regulars, who still march around in their floral patterns and cavalry twill trousers as if they own the place. I even heard one of them, an octogenarian version of the Major from Fawlty Towers, explaining to his female companion that the item he was tucking into was called a 'wrap'. I hope when I reach such an age I can still dazzle the fair sex with my up-to-the-minute knowledge of modern food trends.

The Top Floor
Sloane Square, Chelsea, London, SW1W 8EL