William Sitwell reviews Tom Brown at The Capital: ‘A monument to the dull and misconceived'

Telegraph

15-05-2025

It all sounds glorious. On paper. The prodigal son returns. Tom Brown, a chef from Cornwall, had his big break at The Capital Hotel when fellow West Country stove-meister Nathan Outlaw hired him to lead the kitchens.
Then Brown went east, that essential pilgrimage for chefs who must head for London's E postcodes, where they collect checked shirts, beards and tattoos. And for Brown that meant Cornerstone, a celebrated establishment of seafood and tasting menus, where he showed his mastery of fish cookery with refined plates against a backdrop of industrial modernity.
And he's back, now the main man at the Knightsbridge hotel, a chic vestige of spenny grandeur on Basil Street, round the corner from Harrods and opposite a block containing some of the world's most expensive doctors and shrinks.
It's in a room of some 26 covers, a small area – more private dining space than restaurant – with fantasy forest splodges on the walls and carpets, and what look like giant sea urchins lit up in gold hanging from the ceiling.
With its cluster of obliging staff at the entrance, a sweet little bar, and besuited and elegant service, the restaurant strikes one as a discreet place for elicit rendezvous. In which case one wouldn't want that wrecked by having it firmly put on the map by a big-name chef.
So relax, because it won't be. The Capital's lush confines don't do the food, when it's firing, any favours. Because Brown's occasional culinary brilliance, amid this upscale drawing room vibe, just melts into oblivion.
The Capital has tried out a vast number of cheffy names in this place; the last time I ate here was some 20 years ago when Frenchman Éric Chavot had a go – and his cheeky, jolly, bouncing and jocular self also clashed with the room.
So having pottered along nicely in recent years as a decent brasserie keeping its hotel guests happy, it gives the big-name gambit another go and in comes Brown.
We went for the six-course lunch menu, with the staff kindly letting us mix in the odd dish from the three- and eight-course ones, starting with raw oyster taken from the shell and laid on some apparently hot – but not – seaweed cream on a fried little wedge of bread. It was a fresh taste of the sea with some crunch but came surrounded by decorative, undressed salad leaves that were a waste of the toil of cultivation and a spot on God's earth.
Then came a plate of 'charcuterie': horrid cod mortadella; equally rank bresaola of salmon – it might be a way to age beef, but it simply tired this fish; and their salami – three slices of orange fishy mush which looked like squashed goldfish and smelt like the stuff you feed them with.
Roast chicken abutting bass in a green wrap of leek was a clever combo, but the undercooked white asparagus looked like a dead man's protuberance and it wouldn't suit a morgue let alone this dining room.
My mango pud was an artistic delight covered in sugar spun as a scallop shell. But my pal Monty's chocolate and caper number in a large swirl of olive oil was just that – a flavour combo so offensive it should be banned under the Geneva Convention.
Half-starved and fresh out of captivity, I would still swerve this monument to the dull and misconceived.