The Dorchester is one of the very best hotels in London. Despite being owned by the Brunei Investment Agency, there's still a sense of Britishness to the place and while I've never set foot inside The Grill restaurant before, I am hoping and thinking that it will carry the same standards as the rest of the hotel and that for London residents and foreign visitors alike, it will showcase just how good a British Grill can be. Given my recent struggle to find a really good Sunday lunch served up in a London restaurant, this seems the ideal challenge and a very nice idea: Sunday lunch at the Dorchester Grill.
The room itself is decorated in tartan (like err, Boisdale) which I can only assume is to connect you in to the same idea of Angus beef etc. Your big, padded tartan chair is comfortable, tables with table cloths are immaculately laid and staff provide a warm welcome. The Sunday menu gives you a choice of 5/5/5 on starters, mains and desserts with essentially classics on the main course options which is precisely why you are here and what you expect. But aside of smoked salmon on the starters, your opening dish has several interesting and even surprising options including cuttle fish, heritage tomato and squid ink dressing, and my choice, glazed calves sweetbread, white asparagus, crispy chicken wings and black trompettes.
Before the starter arrived however, the bread basket. Despite dining by myself, a basket containing five varieties of bread (all made in-house) was brought to the table together with three butters. I actually tried each of the breads and they were all fantastic. I knew I had much food on the way and while we are never normally big on munching through bread pre-lunch, for once I had to hold myself back for I could have quite easily grazed through everything provided. When my sweatbreads and crispy chicken wings arrived, appropriately tender sweeetbreads contrasted nicely with chicken wings that had been taken to as far as crispy can be before it's overdone.
But on a Sunday roast, it is always the main course that should be the star and here, the beef as you would expect in a traditional Grill is wheeled round on a silver trolley and carved and plated in front of you. The trolley contained several joints cooked to varying degrees so however you like your beef cooked, it's available. This seems a preferable approach to merely providing the end cuts of the joint for those who want it more cooked and the middle if you want it less cooked, an approach which favours customers at the start of service before customers can only have whatever is left.
The beef today was a rib joint, carved beautifully and thin, but with a good few slices so you end up with a satisfyingly large pile of medium rare beef on your plate. You're asked if you want the red wine gravy spooned over (yes) and a good amount is provided (so many places provide too little gravy!). Also on your plate, there are two large roast potatoes, a Yorkshire pudding and plenty of veg. Varieties of mustard and horseradish are left on the table and the overall result is an enormous plate of food with everything you could want. But the best bit is that the quality is there too, the beef is first class, the red wine gravy rich, and the bit that so many places struggle with, ie, everything else, that's done pretty good too. The roast potatoes and Yorkshire pud are essentially how they should be and the plate is cleared with pleasure.This is pretty much the best Sunday lunch I've had in a London restaurant and apart from nitpicks, I struggle to find fault.
Dessert, I choose a Hazelnut chocolate moelleux, provided a further surprise and was utterly fantastic, being a sphere of chocolate with a totally liquid centre that breaks like an Easter egg and sees some of the chocolate run everywhere and some sitting in a puddle in the larger parts of the now broken sphere, all of which came with a contrasting freshness from a frozen blackberry crumble. For chocolate lovers, it was a beautiful thing and I loved this original take on a moelleux.
Service was also excellent throughout, the staff at The Grill really understanding that highly professional service can still be friendly service and I thought that every member of staff I interacted with undertook their task so very well; I have only praise for them. I had hoped my Sunday lunch at The Grill would be good, but instead I found it to be exceptional. I was also pleasantly surprised that the price for the three course Sunday lunch was £38 which prices it in line with many other Sunday menus around the capital, but given the quality here, that elevates it substantially above the competition on value. As far as I am concerned then, on my Sunday outings thus far, The Grill at The Dorchester has set the benchmark for what Sunday lunch should be and how it should be delivered. I left my lunch table full up and delighted, a very good Sunday indeed.
The room itself is decorated in tartan (like err, Boisdale) which I can only assume is to connect you in to the same idea of Angus beef etc. Your big, padded tartan chair is comfortable, tables with table cloths are immaculately laid and staff provide a warm welcome. The Sunday menu gives you a choice of 5/5/5 on starters, mains and desserts with essentially classics on the main course options which is precisely why you are here and what you expect. But aside of smoked salmon on the starters, your opening dish has several interesting and even surprising options including cuttle fish, heritage tomato and squid ink dressing, and my choice, glazed calves sweetbread, white asparagus, crispy chicken wings and black trompettes.
Before the starter arrived however, the bread basket. Despite dining by myself, a basket containing five varieties of bread (all made in-house) was brought to the table together with three butters. I actually tried each of the breads and they were all fantastic. I knew I had much food on the way and while we are never normally big on munching through bread pre-lunch, for once I had to hold myself back for I could have quite easily grazed through everything provided. When my sweatbreads and crispy chicken wings arrived, appropriately tender sweeetbreads contrasted nicely with chicken wings that had been taken to as far as crispy can be before it's overdone.
But on a Sunday roast, it is always the main course that should be the star and here, the beef as you would expect in a traditional Grill is wheeled round on a silver trolley and carved and plated in front of you. The trolley contained several joints cooked to varying degrees so however you like your beef cooked, it's available. This seems a preferable approach to merely providing the end cuts of the joint for those who want it more cooked and the middle if you want it less cooked, an approach which favours customers at the start of service before customers can only have whatever is left.
The beef today was a rib joint, carved beautifully and thin, but with a good few slices so you end up with a satisfyingly large pile of medium rare beef on your plate. You're asked if you want the red wine gravy spooned over (yes) and a good amount is provided (so many places provide too little gravy!). Also on your plate, there are two large roast potatoes, a Yorkshire pudding and plenty of veg. Varieties of mustard and horseradish are left on the table and the overall result is an enormous plate of food with everything you could want. But the best bit is that the quality is there too, the beef is first class, the red wine gravy rich, and the bit that so many places struggle with, ie, everything else, that's done pretty good too. The roast potatoes and Yorkshire pud are essentially how they should be and the plate is cleared with pleasure.This is pretty much the best Sunday lunch I've had in a London restaurant and apart from nitpicks, I struggle to find fault.
Dessert, I choose a Hazelnut chocolate moelleux, provided a further surprise and was utterly fantastic, being a sphere of chocolate with a totally liquid centre that breaks like an Easter egg and sees some of the chocolate run everywhere and some sitting in a puddle in the larger parts of the now broken sphere, all of which came with a contrasting freshness from a frozen blackberry crumble. For chocolate lovers, it was a beautiful thing and I loved this original take on a moelleux.
Service was also excellent throughout, the staff at The Grill really understanding that highly professional service can still be friendly service and I thought that every member of staff I interacted with undertook their task so very well; I have only praise for them. I had hoped my Sunday lunch at The Grill would be good, but instead I found it to be exceptional. I was also pleasantly surprised that the price for the three course Sunday lunch was £38 which prices it in line with many other Sunday menus around the capital, but given the quality here, that elevates it substantially above the competition on value. As far as I am concerned then, on my Sunday outings thus far, The Grill at The Dorchester has set the benchmark for what Sunday lunch should be and how it should be delivered. I left my lunch table full up and delighted, a very good Sunday indeed.