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Gordon Ramsay at Claridge's was one of the first to set the "name" chef trend in London hotel restaurants - but it now seems almost everyone is at it!

The problem with London hotels in the past wasn’t always that the food was unexciting; quite a few hotels had extremely good chefs working for them.  No, the problem was that the ambience was unexciting – ancient waiters in dinner jackets, rooms that hadn’t been redecorated since the Duke of Wellington’s day and a rather starchy feel.

That’s all changed today and so has the way many hotels see their food service.  Dinner by Heston Blumenthal, for instance, is really a Heston Blumenthal restaurant which just happens to sit within the Mandarin Oriental hotel – rather than being the hotel’s dining room.

Increasingly, hotels are looking for chefs who complement their brands – so Bruno Loubet’s “modern bistrot” style complements the Zetter’s contemporary and relaxed vibe, for instance.

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The style of Bistrot Bruno Loubet at the Zetter reflects the style of the hotel - offering consistent quality in a breezy and unpretentious manner

However, real foodies need to make sure they know what they’re getting when they book into a ‘name’ chef’s restaurant.  Go to Marcus Wareing’s restaurant in the Berkeley and you may well get Marcus himself cooking, almost every day – although now he has to split his time with his swanky new Gilbert Scott restaurant at the Renaissance St Pancras.

At other hotels, the chef may be the big name, but he probably isn’t slaving over a hot stove.  For instance Alain Ducasse has an impressive number of restaurants to his name all over the world, not just at The Dorchester – so you will get Ducasse’s Provençal-influenced cooking by proxy.

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Hélène Darroze at the Connaught is thought to be there about half the time, but most other chefs are absentees – a bit like 18th-century clergymen who were vicars of many parishes and got paid for every one while only holding Sunday services very occasionally.

However, the work a chef puts into developing the menu and organising the kitchen shouldn’t be underestimated.  Blumenthal may not have cooked your meal personally but he put an impressive effort into creating new dishes (such as a ‘mandarin’ made entirely of meat which looks absolutely real!) using his advanced cookery-meets-science techniques.

You may not always see the great man himself at Dinner by Heston but anyone who has been there will tell you that it most certainly has his imprint

Meanwhile hotels like Fergus Henderson’s St John Hotel are also defining themselves through food – the hotel is an offshoot of Henderson’s restaurant near Smithfield, which offers up hearty English cooking including many dishes featuring offal (his motto is ‘nose to tail eating’, or ‘every bit of the pig except the squeak’ as we say in East Anglia!).

So hotels are really upping the ante when it comes to food.  Even the Savoy Grill, which you’d think would be famous enough without a celebrity chef, is now ‘Gordon Ramsay at the Savoy Grill’ – though it isn’t really Gordon who is doing the cooking but Stuart Gillies (the Gordon Ramsay website is refreshingly honest about this, I’m glad to say).

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Of course, you don’t need to stay at the hotel to eat in the restaurant – you could stay in a much cheaper place and tiptoe out to get your foodie treat.  That’s less the case with the Town Hall Hotel in East London – where most residents will probably want to stay in, as other than curry houses there’s not all that much great cuisine in Bethnal Green!

Viajante at the Town Hall Hotel is a hotbed of gastronomic innovation in an area of London that's not well known for its upscale dining establishments

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The good news for guests is that the hotel’s Viajante restaurant run by Nuno Mendes offers seriously good and very interesting fusion cooking.

But it’s clear that upscale hotels are hoping the branding ‘sticks’ – and that foodies decide to order an expensive room to go with their meal.  Though if you enjoy eating in fancy hotel restaurants on the cheap then there are ways to do that too; as well as to avoid hotel restaurants entirely.

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Photo credits: Claridge’s Hotel, Zetter Hotel, Mandarin Oriental Hotel, Town Hall Hotel.

Tagged as: Claridge's, Connaught Hotel, Mandarin Oriental London, Renaissance St Pancras Hotel, St John Hotel, The Dorchester, The Savoy, Town Hall Hotel, Zetter Hotel