Restaurants

By Guy Dimond

The Royal Institution has been championing science for more than two hundred years. Without its support, resident research scientist Michael Faraday would not have unravelled the mysteries of electricity. These days the plush premises in Mayfair are mainly used as an events and exhibition centre, but it has also just opened a café, bar and restaurant to the public.

The building's new £12 million refurb is as aesthetically discordant as a physics teacher's tie collection. Bright lighting, blood red chandeliers and plate glass walls clash with walls lined with bound copies of old science journals; a dark carpet in the dining room swallows light like a black hole. The café serves the usual pre-fab snacks and drinks. The bar is the most appealing area; on our visit a book club, comprised of scientists, were dissecting a popular novel for its shoddily-researched coverage of physics.

The dining room was a quiet as an anechoic chamber on our evening visit, with only one other table occupied. The staff tried to jolly things along, but couldn't dispel a slight air of desperation and gloom about the place; the lighting in particular is as unflattering as laboratory strip lighting.

The catering has been contracted out to Digby Trout, a firm best-known for their museum cafés. The dining room's Modern European menu is poles apart from museum café catering. Starters include a pea and mint linguine with horseradish cream, which was a good texture though it didn't have the expected contrast of flavours; if anything, it was bland. A main course of Cornish lemon sole served with shrimps, parsley and capers was a better dish, despite the surfeit of tiny bones.

Most of the dishes have a contemporary British slant, though classic British cuts such as Barnsley lamb chops are livened up with a scoop of baba ganoush and some 1970s-style deep-fried straw potatoes. Puddings also have some appealing British retro touches, such as the gooseberry and elderflower trifle served in a sundae glass, topped by with ice cream made from clotted cream. We though the meal was fine, but could see no reason for ever wanting to return.

On the way out, we admired the statue of a man holding a doughnut. He looked oddly familiar – from the back of pre-2001 £20 notes, as it turned out. Michael Faraday is depicted holding the ring-shaped electromagnet he used for experiments. There, a contemporary reference to physics without a single reference to the Large Hadron Collider. Doh!

Time Out October 2008