An Unexpected Winner - Athenaeum: Mayfair, Friday 4th December, 2009

One can get bored of it all. The relentless perusal of hotel restaurant menus, the over-fawning yet somehow disinterested service, the consistent themes running through the menus around London… In this ‘business’ (I don’t feel qualified or rich enough to use this term with total authenticity just yet), you need to be discerning and hard-lined. And if you’re going to try hotel food across the capital in a variety of places, you need to be able to make distinctions and judgements enough to separate the multitude of establishments vying for your custom.

Athenaeum, let me begin by saying, was lovely. Not perhaps Indigo great, but it verged between decent and excellent throughout. The starters weren’t bad: some roast goose liver with cherries and some field mushrooms stuffed with stilton. These admittedly sound quite fantastic, but they weren’t entirely what they were cracked up to be based on the descriptions. Liver – underwhelming and…cherries?! Mushrooms – too insubstantial and uneven. On the plus side, neither was unpleasant so we moved to main courses.

Now, I’m not one to baulk at spending a bit of cash on food, but sometimes you end up spending serious money on a dish purely out of curiosity. A £34 steak at a hotel restaurant is something I was keen to try. It was worth it. Superbly cooked (rare), served with some delicious béarnaise plus dressing. However, bizarrely the most important part of this dish turned out to be the chips. Thick cut, fluffy in the middle, not quite crisp but dry enough on the outside, perfect measurements and tasting quite as you always hope chips will taste. The suckling pig was also very good, though they seemed a little too proud of the pumpkin (another current craze) that came with it. Not content with merely dressing the dish, they gave us a roasted wedge of it, plus some stuffing. We ordered some decent vegetables and some exquisite red cabbage with apple on the side of these, so by dessert we were already very happy.

Desserts hit the right spots because, well, they just were the right desserts. A chocolate fondant (yawn) with Bailey’s ice cream (hmm) was very pleasant. Had they had taken the alcohol out of the ice cream, it might’ve been better. Some sticky toffee pudding was thick, filling, saucy and served with some stunning vanilla ice cream and it nearly stopped me in my tracks. It was really, really good. More or less everything you need from your classic English dessert.

I suggest you give Athenaeum a try at some point if you’re able. The food is generally enjoyable and the dining room is just lovely with bright lights, mirrors and booths all around. The staff were friendly and attentive as they should be, and we didn’t have any complaints at the end of the evening.

Athenaeum