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Restaurant trends at London hotels in 2012.
We compare our London hotel experiences with Lost in Catering's review of 2012 restaurant trends.
I’m not a particularly good trend-spotter. I tend to remain faithful to a number of favourite restaurants or else I like to explore the far out territories of Gujarati, African, or Lebanese food or any other cuisine I haven’t tried yet. But I do occasionally notice what’s going on around me, so I was interested to come across Lost in Catering’s prognosis of restaurant trends for 2012 and to compare it with my own experience.
I agree with Lost in Catering’s signposting of a focus in restaurants on “meaning” for instance. I’ve also seen a lot more concern with where food comes from – not just in terms of the authenticity of cooking, but also the traceability of ingredients. The commitment at the Cavendish Hotel (evident from my review of breakfast there) to sustainable sourcing from British farms sets a good example; and being on Jermyn Street, which contains the justly famed Paxton and Whitfield cheese shop, it needs to.
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The Cavendish Hotel's "Best of British" breakfast
And I’ve noted the growing concern with healthy food too. That’s something which is a particularly hot topic for business travellers; I’m sure I’m not the only person to dread putting on extra kilos when I travel on business simply because many hotels feel the need to serve heavy foods.
The improvement is particularly noticeable at breakfast, where the selection for those who don’t want the ‘full English’ or too many buttery croissants has got better in recent years. The four-berry selection and fantastic yogurts served while I ate breakfast at The Stafford recently showed that hotels are capable of offering health and wellbeing as well as the traditional showpiece dishes they’ve always excelled in.
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Fresh berries are a lovely and healthy touch at The Stafford
While hotels do now offer healthy food options, I’ve found that many still don’t provide much choice for vegetarians or those who want an occasional meat-free meal. That’s certainly an area where many hotels can improve. When even offal-eater Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall tells us to use less meat as it’s more sustainable, being veggie has gone mainstream!
“Pop-ups” and street market food are big trends in London right now.
That’s a difficult trend for a hotel to take advantage of, though St Martin’s Hotel actually tried to with a pop-up Dri Dri gelato parlour. Similarly, The Athenaeum has been running a pop-up pudding parlour which is a bit of a triumph as recently reviewed on this blog.
The trend recently has been running towards “destination” gourmet restaurants and “name” chefs at London hotels like Heston Blumenthal at the Mandarin Oriental; however, perhaps the time has come for hotels to be more souk-like, with four or five different small food outlets – a little bakery, a baguette stand, a pizza bar and so on.
Will gourmet pizza be a regular item on hotel menus in years to come?
That never used to work, because pizza was just seen as “fast food” – cheap and almost inevitably nasty. But the success of true gourmet fast food (for instance at Exmouth market) has changed that – and while The Ritz might not be adopting this idea soon, I’d look to see some of the more contemporary four-star hotels perhaps exploring that route.
The other trend I’ve noticed is part of Lost in Catering’s “Flavour dial up” trend: South-East Asian is “in” - which means ginger and spring onions are too. This is something the W London Hotel has picked up on with its Spice Market restaurant. There’s a focus on brighter, zingier flavours, even in western cooking, with umami the flavour of the moment. Mediterranean and Portuguese are in and traditional, cream-rich French cuisine is out.
Albufera at the Melia White House and the new tapas restaurant at Myhotel Chelsea – both of which were recently reviewed by my blog colleague Jules – seem to be riding on the fashion for Mediterranean food. As is the Pestana Chelsea Bridge with its innovative Portugese “tapas table”.
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The "tapas table" at the Atlantico Restaurant (Pestana Chelsea) is typical of the Mediterranean trend at London hotels
“Food and your life” is another interesting trend. A defining fact about UK society today is not so much that people eat better, but that they’re more interested in food – and they’re often cooking as well as eating.
So, for instance, the Stafford Hotel’s pub talks have offered guests the opportunity to learn cooking with the hotel’s chef Brendan Fyldes, as well as the art of cocktail mixology with bar manager Benoit Provost. The chef’s table experience has also become popular, giving diners a chance to see exactly how their food is prepared.
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The Stafford has a unique and atmospheric wine cellar which is also used for intimate private dinners
I look forward to some interesting developments over the next year in London’s restaurants. And maybe, just maybe, I’m going to manage to review my next few hotel restaurants without putting on too much weight!
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Photo credits: adactio, Cavendish Hotel, eblaser, avlxyz, Pestana Chelsea Bridge Hotel, Stafford Hotel (Kempinski).
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