The Landau
Above: The Landau
We’ve always been great fans of Andrew Turner. The chef who kick-started the grazing trend in London cooked up a storm at Brown’s Hotel in Mayfair before moving on to launch 1880 at the Bentley Kempinski off Gloucester Road. The latter was something of an over-designed blingfest but it nevertheless kept the foodies coming back, which says a lot about this man’s considerable talent.
After a couple of years in the country, Turner is back in town and at the helm of another hotel restaurant. And this time, the dining room matches his elegant cooking perfectly.
Done up by restaurant wiz David Collings and comfortably laid out with classy furniture and elegant table settings, it has great see-and-be-seen potential, with tables facing inwards in a giant oval. Vast windows let in plenty of light, making this a particularly pleasant spot for breakfast or lunch.
That said, our evening meal was pretty special too. We left decisions to the capable front-of-house team and were treated to a flawless five-course meal with fabulous matching wines.
When cooking is as good as it is here, it is hard to single out favourite dishes, but we were particularly taken with the super-smooth pumpkin soup serve with butter-fried cepes and soft-boiled quail’s eggs. The dish of seared scallops with leeks, morels and pork was another highlight and even the not-so sweet-toothed among us agreed that the caramelised pear with milk and maple sorbet was a winner.
But, as with all of Turner’s grazing menus, the real beauty lies in the way individual dishes complement each other to create a meal that's all about perfect balance between textures and flavours. We can’t wait to come back for more.
by Annica Wainwright, an editor at Square Meal
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