A man's restaurant: Victor Garvey at the Midland Grand reviewed

Spectator

16 hours ago

The Midland Grand Hotel at St Pancras Station is George Gilbert Scott's masterpiece: his Albert Memorial in Hyde Park (a big dead prince under a big gold cross) has just too much sex to it. Late Victorian architecture seethes with erotica. The facetious will say imperialism was really just penetration, and there's something in that.
It is now the St Pancras Renaissance Hotel, London – oh, the fretted imaginings of marketing departments – and, on a more conscious level, the closest you will get to the great age of rail, though spliced with plastic now. The modern station is ugly and translucent and sells face cream to tourists, and buns. But it hasn't lost its drama. This is the gateway to Europe and Derby. There is a monumental statue of lovers embracing by the platforms: it is 30ft high, and bronze. I think her skirt is from Hobbs, but I went to a girls' school.
Inside is Victor Garvey at the Midland Grand, formerly the Gilbert Scott, a fine-dining restaurant (the phrase should be suppressed) in the French style (Garvey's grandmother was Charles de Gaulle's cook). The hotel's interiors – bloody Catholic neo-Gothic – are familiar from a bewildering panorama of films, which I should like to see welded together, and here: Richard III, The Secret Garden, Batman Begins. But sumptuousness does not intrude into the dining room; rather, the drama stops.
It's a lovely room, tall and curved, and they have broken it. Neo-Gothicis camp itself: too much is not enough, as sang the Kids from Fame. Blood will have blood. This is decorated with creams and browns, possibly because men – this is a man's restaurant – think bright colours are feminine, to which I say: meet William Morris. Someone has installed Art Deco lighting. I know worse things happened to the Midland Grand when it was a British Rail office, but still.
We are on a vast table on a small stage. It feels like Posh and Becks's wedding. The staff are young, charming and very literal. They stick to the script. And that is French haute cuisine, skilled to the point of agonised. There is a menu gourmandise for £179 and a menu experience for £139. (Wine pairings are £99 to £219.)
We eat à la carte, because tasting menus are torture. Even so, we are brought, unasked, a dish of tomato stripped, remade and laid with flowers. I know Garvey is a brilliant chef. I can feel his childhood strivings. Faced with them at dinner, I just wish he'd try less hard. Whatever he performs on his tomato – and he does every-thing you can conceive of, and somethings you can't – it is already perfect. He is tilting at tomato phantoms.
We eat Devon rock crab with sweet pea and seaweed vinegar, shrouded with foam (£28); a jumbo quail with girolles, broken apart and reconstituted as if by a tiny murderous Borrower (£32); tortellini with morel (£29). If it is all intense – this food needs Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor to accompany it – the only real failure is the tortellini. It appears under a slick of foam so thick I think I am driving in fog. You clear the foam as if seeking an airway: food as a scream for resuscitation. The warm bread, though, is perfect. All gifted chefs do this. It is a taunt.
Still, the clients – tables of financiers, you can tell from the haircuts – seem happy. On the wall is a cracked mirror. If they look hard enough – and they won't – they will see Garvey's ideal version of themselves.
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