Restaurants

By Guy Dimond

Earlier this year it was announced that Tokyo has more Michelin-starred restaurants than Paris - a meaningless statistic which mostly tells us that the French-based inspectors like eating out in Tokyo. And so they should, because proper Japanese food is sensational.

Yet Japanese food does not travel well. Only last year a Japanese guidebook to Paris (published by JETRO, a credible Japanese quango), slammed the city's Japanese restaurants by only 'approving' 50 of the city's 600 so-called Japanese restaurants. The others were not considered 'authentic' enough.
I was pondering the French love affair with Japanese food in Alain Ducasse's latest restaurant, just opened in London.

Chef-turned-restaurateur Ducasse currently has 15 Michelin stars around his global empire - three more than Gordon Ramsay - and has clearly been spending time in Tokyo at his restaurant there. One of his signature dishes - prepared by chef Jocelyn Herland, as Ducasse himself had already left London within a week of the new opening - is seared Scottish scallops with ponzu dressing, topped with dried shavings of bonito fish that curled and waved in the heat of the dish. The citrus ponzu fruit and the bonito are a clear homage to Japan, and it's one of the more interesting dishes on this menu, though the dressing is quite sharp.

But in comparison to the thrills of eating in Tokyo - a city I've eaten my way around, from riceburger fast-food joints to the finest kaiseki ryori (Japanese haute cuisine) restaurants - Ducasse's dishes at his latest restaurant seem very tame.

Take, for example, the dish of poached chicken breast. Breast is of course the blandest cut of a chicken, but here it's a signature dish (£10 supplement, normally; our waiter forgot to add this to the bill). And there it was, dull breast meat, with a rich coating of albufera - a creamy sauce with Madeira, truffles and foie gras. Flawlessly cooked and presented - but where was the thrill factor? Another dish laced with truffles also missed the mark; a soft-boiled hen's egg was doused in a black truffle sauce, yet the aroma was weak. Silver leaf had been pointlessly scattered on this egg to garnish it, but was no substitute for the powerfully bosky truffle aroma we'd been anticipating. Expensive ingredients are used, but not always to best effect.

The high point of our meal was a Ducasse update on rum baba. This doughnut-like dessert was last in fashion in the 1960s, so must be due a revival. This version was sublime: a brioche-like yeast cake served with a choice of rums, and whipped cream so ethereal it was like eating a vanilla-flavoured cloud. (Ducasse seems big on cream; we had cream at every course, even with the breads.) In contrast, the chocolate and raspberry dessert was too brash: it looked like a crash-landed Sputnik, but the bitter chocolate and raspberry coulis was also a crash-landing of flavours.

There is much to enjoy about Alain Ducasse at The Dorchester: attentive, friendly service; perfectly-executed cooking; a room that allows you to talk quietly and still be heard. Most, if not all, of our fellow customers appeared to be business diners, blending into the beige background. But it's the greedy pricing that ultimately spoils what would otherwise be a good meal out.

On arrival, my companion was offered a glass of champagne, which she accepted, assuming it was complimentary; the waiting staff have soft, mumbling French voices, which can seem charming at first; but their imperfect English hinders effective communication. Her glass of champagne appeared on the bill at £24. If you venture into the wine list, you'll find a frightening list of the most expensive French producers on the planet, at steep mark-ups. Finding a bottle costing less than £50 is a challenge, as is finding a non-French wine or a list of wines by the glass. It's difficult to get away with spending less than £100 per head here - we managed it, just, by drinking tap water. For this price we had hoped for culinary fireworks, but instead we had a perfectly nice meal in a perfectly nice restaurant - for a premium price that's around 50% more than you'll pay in other London restaurants of similar calibre. In January 2009 the UK Michelin Guide awarded this restaurant two Michelin stars, which we suspect says more about the Michelin Guide than it does this restaurant.

Time Out London