Restaurants

A few years without care and investment has left the first-floor restaurant at this Sloane Street hotel looking as shabby and soulless as an airport lounge. A ground-floor café caters for most residents’ appetites at midday, leaving the cavernous upper dining rooms empty save for whichever disparate bunch happens to be attending a conference that day, plus an occasional unsuspecting tourist or two. Even the bosses seem to have given up on Mju; all but the manager looked like agency staff and bore the distinctive hallmark of the bored, unpolished and uninspired, who want to be anywhere but waiting on tables. Even the honcho served a long-opened bottle of Portuguese pinot noir with the words ‘I never recommend Portuguese wine because it’s all so tannic’. This is such a shame, since Mju’s menu is one of the best French-Asian fusions we’ve come across. Many dishes are outstandingly creative and delicious: our venison with celeriac gateau and bitter chocolate and sharp raspberry sauces being a case in point. Apart from goat’s milk panna cotta with lavender and almond emulsion, which sounds like something off a Dulux colour chart, you can look forward to a surprising medley of well-travelled, well-matched and well-cooked ingredients.

Time Out Eating & Drinking Guide 2008