The whole point of going to Claridge’s in the first place is to sweep in through the grand main hotel entrance
Dante Mayfair, inside Claridge’s on Brook Street in London, has been created, the hotel’s management says, to become “the living room of Mayfair”. It’s a charming idea: pop in, have a cuppa or a bowl of pappardelle bolognese, or lie about on the fancy sofas wearing elasticated tracksuit bottoms and slurping soft-serve with s’mores. No, sorry, I’ve gone too far: it’s nowhere near that informal.
Still, like many well-used living rooms, this one has been rearranged, redecorated and repurposed many times over the years. I’ve eaten fancy-schmancy Simon Rogan dinners here when it was Fera, as well as his table experience at Aulis during which venture capitalist “foodies” bored the pants off me over a 12-course meal in the kitchen itself. I’ve stared unmoved at Daniel Humm’s New York-style pomp at the short-lived Davies and Brook, and have visited several times since Claridge’s took matters in-house in the shape of a rather anonymous ye olde British brasserie.
