“Hotel restaurants used to be rooms full of tables and chairs with no one there,” says Marcus Wareing, the two Michelin-starred chef whose restaurant, the Gilbert Scott, opens at the St Pancras Renaissance in May. They were synonymous with poor food and worse service, seemingly an afterthought to the main business of providing a bed for the night. The only people to eat there were hotel guests too tired or timid to venture out.
Today, though, the opposite is true. Many of the hottest tables in London, and around the world, are in hotels and non-residents are clamouring to get inside. So too are some of the world’s top chefs.
In November, Michel Roux Jr opened Roux at the Landau in the revamped Langham Hotel in London, Heston Blumenthal opened Dinner to much fanfare at the Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park last month, in June Thierry Marx moves into the Mandarin Oriental Paris and in July Wolfgang Puck opens CUT at 45 Park Lane, a new luxury hotel in London.