It is, as everyone from Sam Altman to my mother will tell you, apparently now inevitable that AI is coming for our jobs. All over the world, lawyers, accountants, coders, creatives and people who hit a keyboard all day for a living (damn!) are looking over their shoulders at the towering artificial wave about to crash onto the analogue shores of humanity, wondering what exactly they might do all day once work is, as Elon Musk forecasts, optional.
The future, then, belongs to the robots, leaving the rest of us to get reacquainted with our opposable thumbs. This could be the time to get really good at changing lightbulbs. Or opening envelopes. This is what I tell my kids.
Alternatively, they could become chefs. Cheffing, as I see it, is the nexus of humanity and all but impervious to the rushing digital tide. It sublimates food, already life fuel, into something deeply, intensely human. When is fish roe not fish roe? When it’s aged Kaluga caviar served on a delicate venison tart and washed down with a wintery consommé (of which more shortly). And this is something robots, what with being robots and all, will never ever truly understand.
Which brings us to Alex Dilling. The London-born chef’s self-titled first solo restaurant at Hotel Café Royal racked up two Michelin stars within six months of opening, making his contemporary French cuisine the talk of the town. Has it still got la gourmandise? In the name of all that is human, Spear’s went to find out.
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Design & Interiors
Hotel Café Royal is one of my favourite spots in the West End. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve stepped off Air Street and through its bronze revolving doors: for power lunches, to stay the night in one of its deliciously muted rooms or just to use the marbled facilities when caught short on an ill-timed Soho-to-Mayfair dash on foot.
Guillaume Marly, the former GM now overseeing this summer’s launch of the Waldorf Astoria at Admiralty Arch, even learned my name and used to welcome me as he swept across the lobby floor, commanding all that went before him as only a French Anglophile can. And now I come to think of it, I once interviewed Kate Winslet in one of the hotel’s suites. Association is everything. And she was completely wonderful.
Inside, Sir David Chipperfield’s loving restoration of the great sweeping building at the toe cap of Regent Street – now nearly 15 years on – has always made a virtue of its airiness. Alex Dilling, by contrast, is tucked away in a cosy first-floor corner overlooking the bustling street below and offers just 34 covers, lending it the sort of intimacy you’d expect of a venue much harder to find.
On arrival, the first view is of a busy kitchen silenced behind a glass-panelled wine display case. A small lobby area leads to a wood-panelled bar and then into a main room lined on two sides by arched windows. The ceiling is set with lightly brushed mirrors, creating, of course, the sense that the space is roomier than it really is.
Content from our partners
Our round table, which at another time would have been large enough to host an eight-handed game of poker, backed into a sort of open booth with a curved banquette. The palette is light and unthreatening, the setting simple but pristine. Bland? I prefer calm.
Food & Drink
At Alex Dilling, it is, as ever it was, tasting menus all the way, meaning choice is, to all intents, off the, um, menu. Our hosts had proposed the full nine yards – an eight-courser – assuming one is ready to count canapés and petits fours as a course, which in this case I absolutely am. The theme is fine dining, contemporary French style, so think delicate and decorous and leave expectations of a hearty feed at home.
Now, I hate a cliché as much as the next hack, but I have to say each course was a work of art. Those jewel-like canapés – potato rosti with dry-aged wagyu and black truffle, prawn tartare with an oyster, cuttlefish and sourdough tuile, and that venison tart with horseradish and Kaluga caviar served with venison consommé – would not have looked out of place under glass in a Van Cleef & Arpels boutique.
Later, the truffle croissant, a sideshow one might think, caught the eye with the perfect curvature and striped flourish of a large shell. Then there was the Hunter Chicken, a Dilling signature, apparently shaped in an Easter egg mould and stuffed so evenly and so elegantly it looked like its own round in Is It Cake?
I could just as easily wax lyrical about the Devon crab with bagels, the pâté de campagne laced with foie gras or the John Dory that came decorated with squid ink tattoos and drenched in a Basque chorizo emulsion that had the consistency of molten butterscotch, albeit not the flavour. It was all beautiful to look at and just as pretty on the palate, too.
Service
I doubt I’d be alone in taking exception to being routinely interrupted while dining, not least in service of the banal. Have I had a good day? Actually, no I’ve had a terrible day, since you asked – pull up a chair and I’ll tell you all about it. Mercifully, there was precious little mindless tattle as we skipped our way through the menu. The plate-dropping, cutlery-replacing and crumb-raking routines were well choreographed and unobtrusive (as they have to be if they’re not to become insufferable during eight rounds), while each course was presented with the customary gobbledygook, none of which made much sense to me but seemed to result in some really rather wonderful food.
The crowd
Well, it was small. With those 34 seats, it’s never likely to be anything but. And how wonderful. Speaking as one who will invariably take evasive action when approaching a large group of people, and who finds watching other people eat a trial rarely worth enduring, I consider this an extremely good thing. It meant my companion and I could converse without ever having to raise our voices above the hoo-ha. Royal indeed.
The verdict
I can think of no greater praise than to say Dilling’s is food robots will never understand. Go and the joys of being human will rise.
More information
Website: alexdilling.com
Email: reservations@alexdilling.com
Phone: +44 (0) 020 7459 4022
