DUCASSE AT THE DORCHESTER

BRUCE PALLING | UNCORKED | November 24th 2007

Bruce has an impressive but not quite a dazzling evening in Alain Ducasse's new London restaurant. The food could do with a few tweaks he says; the clientele could do with a total refurbishment ...

Special to MORE INTELLIGENT LIFE

You may know Paul Fussell, an American writer, for "The Great War and Modern Memory", his brilliant account of the 1914-18 war in contemporary literature, or for "Abroad", his book about British literary travellers in the 1920s and 1930s. But look out also for his funniest and least academic book, "Caste Marks: Style and Status in the USA". Its taxonomy of status includes the main social classes--prole, middle and upper--but also, a valuable addition, the "out-of-sight" classes at the bottom and the top of the totem pole.

The bottom-most ones are not the people you stumble over in the street or the Big Issue sales force, but those institutionalised for medical, social or criminal reasons. You don't see them unless they are your family.

At the top or the bottom, you never really know where the "out-of-sighters" lurk unless you come across enormous walls and imposing gate houses, such as you might find around Wandsworth Prison or the Vestey estate in the Cotswolds. It might be stretching it a bit to define Lord Vestey as an aristocrat, given that his first rich ancestor was a Liverpool butcher who purchased a peerage from Lloyd George for £25,000, but he's definitely out of sight.

This is a useful idea to keep in mind: the higher up the pecking order you get, the more you wish to be out of sight. No wonder NetJets is booming.

The principle has made its way ostentatiously into the dining-room of Alain Ducasse's new restaurant at the Dorchester on Hyde Park. He and his designer, Patrick Jouin, have created a version of retro-Sputnik in the old Terrace Room--you almost expect to see the serving staff dressed in Aeroflot or Pan Am uniforms. There is lots of Wallpaper*-type dÉcor, and ovoid holes in the walls, plus a waist-high metallic sheet along the Park Lane window.

What crowns the whole shebang is a shimmering, fountain-like, floor-to-ceiling structure just to the right as you enter (see above). It looks like a force-field that might teleport you off to another planet or even universe, glittering away in a semi-solid beam of light. What it is, however, is rather more down to earth: it is a VIP room in the centre of the restaurant, enveloped by fibre-optic curtains. Up to six people can dine for a mere £1375 (double that for the wine), without anyone seeing in, while they can vaguely observe everyone else outside their gaudy grotto.

Judging by the noises emanating from this cocoon when we were dining, it was playing host to a reunion of the socially challenged. Cries of, "Christ, mate, there's nothing that Kevin here doesn't know about wine!", and "Looks like Croatia have sunk us", spilled out, along with assorted chortles about the cost of everything. Were these a party of celebrating hedge funders--or a gang that had pulled off a lucrative child-benefit fraud?

But back to Ducasse. Forget about Gordon Ramsay. Alain Ducasse is the reigning global superchef. His impeccable credentials include two concurrent three-star restaurants in France and Monaco, plus an impressive number of lesser establishments ranging from bastides and hamlets in Provence to a hunting-lodge in Tuscany.

Strictly speaking, Joel Robuchon now has more stars than Ducasse, thanks to the ludicrous new Michelin guide to Tokyo. The Japanese are so congenitally insecure that EVERY restaurant in Tokyo seems to need at least one Michelin star--so, naturally, Robuchon has three. The same thing happened when Amex launched in Japan; the starter level had to be the gold card because it was social hari kiri to merely have a green one. However, anyone who has had the misfortune to use the Michelin guide to Italy knows that it really is a question of caveat degustator once off Michelin's home turf.

I came to the table with a certain amount of baggage. I am a big fan of Ducasse and his restaurants, especially the Louis Quinze in the Hotel de Paris in Monaco. But his record in London has been less brilliant: he was involved in a cigar club, Monte's, and then Spoon, neither of which exactly caught on.

His Parisian headquarters at the Plaza AthÉnÉe (also by Patrick Jouin) has the most stunning dÉcor of any grand restaurant I know: slate-grey chandeliers surrounded by what appears to be netting and a general homage to mechanism. But I preferred the food at his previous Parisian place, formerly Joel Robuchon's, in the Sixteenth. In the new one there is a tendency to be a touch too serious and intellectual. Louis Quinze in Monaco doesn't have this problem, because of its bias towards ProvenÇal/Mediterranean dishes, which makes it one of my favourite places on the planet. I recall sitting in the private kitchen and eating a perfect roast partridge with a slab of foie gras, while beyond me it was as chaotic as a casualty station in the Mekong delta.

Christian Laval, the London restaurant director, is an old friend from my first visit to Louis Quinze a decade earlier, when I fled there from a horrific QE2 cruise to cheer myself up.

In fact, all of the London staff are first-rate, with their polite concern and lack of inane conversation. Even the receptionist outside the entrance knew all of the major dishes and spoke intelligently about them.

Hugues Lepin, the chief sommelier, could not have been more helpful or anecdotal in his approach. Purely out of academic interest I scanned his fairly youngish wine list and commented on a Vosne RomanÉe '93 of Henri Jayer for a punchy £3800. It was quite a story. Their first batch of Jayer wines to the value of £150,000 was hijacked in Burgundy last month after leaving the cellars, so they had to source from other destinations.

There are quite a lot of "big number" wines, such as Yquem '67 at £3800 (the first time I had that at a restaurant in Pasadena nearly 30 years ago it was a mere $90) plus a relative bargain--a magnum of Margaux '83 for £3500. If you don't want to splash the cash, there is the wonderful Domaine de Chevalier '03 for £85, and some decent generic white Burgundies from Domaine Leflaive for around £60.

The house Champagne is a Ducasse selection from Paul Drouet, reassuringly austere and delicate, rather than full-throttle. My wife tried the Noble cuvÉe rosÉ from Lanson and found it charming, whereas I am afraid the only rosÉ I like is Cristal (as long as I am not paying).

Now to the food. The chef is Jocelyn Herland, former sous-chef of Plaza AthÉnÉe. He has been on this job for a mere three weeks, brought in at the last minute when Nicola Canuti, from Louis Quinze, abruptly returned to France for "personal reasons".

Alain Ducasse at the Dorchester declares its vocation to be "contemporary French cuisine". Rather than amuse-bouches, there was a small salad-bowl of assorted raw vegetables with an extremely fluffy Chantilly cream, plus a small dish of extraordinarily intense anchovy and olive oil sauce. Apart from this last sauce, it was interesting but hardly earth-shattering.

The next courses we had were both based on langoustines. My wife had her langoustine with chopped avocado. The intensity of the flavours was not there, perhaps because they were too cold. However, the white truffle sauce that was poured around the entire dish was absolutely exquisite, and the waiter had to virtually wrestle the container back from the table.

My marinated langoustine tartare with Oscietre caviar was a serious letdown, especially as I had been inspired to choose it in memory of a life-changing ceviche of raw seafood and caviar prepared by Philippe Legendre at Le Cinque in Paris a few years earlier. That was a profound experience because of the intensity of the flavours and the almost gun-metal contrast of the caviar--whereas this was completely flat, and possessed zero interaction between the two raw ingredients.

Things looked up for me next: a halibut, with lemon caper sauce, spinach and Jerusalem artichokes, was a perfectly cooked rectangular slab. It separated like heavy manuscript pages from a miniature book, and the lemon caper sauce leapt off the plate. My wife's seared scallops were less successful--slightly overcooked, and crusty, rather than glazed, with an overpowering citrus sauce.

We left the wines to Hugues, who served a modern-style Alsace, a 2004 pinot auxerrois of Domaine Josmeyer. I know next to nothing about Alsace, but it is increasingly grabbing my attention with its purity and ability to cut through intense food tastes.

My main meat dish was a poached breast of Landes chicken, with seasonal vegetables, and a sauce brilliantly infused with foie gras. The chicken was slightly tough and rubbery, but the generous
shavings of white truffle on top relieved the pain, and, again, the sauces came to
the rescue. (When I was ordering my dishes, the waiter had been sharp enough to warn me that my initial preference for a simmered foie-de-canard starter might have anticipated the sauce on the chicken.)

My wife's roasted pigeon with Tuscan crostini, salmis jus, was considered perfectly fine but not overwhelmingly memorable. I didn't like the overuse of berries and fruit around the plate, but that was only me. In fact, I had a subliminal sense that there was too much use of fruits rather than vegetables in the overall approach to the dishes. We had a generous Nuit St Georges 2002 premier cru, which was partially mature, and capable of going the distance with the chicken and the pigeon.

The four cheeses were not spectacular; and, because we didn't want any goat, we were forced to have two helpings of Comte, one of Montgomery Cheddar and another of humdrum Stilton. Each portion was mirrored with a fruit compote or jam, which I am afraid I didn't bother to try, as I consider such mixtures with cheese barbaric.

The puddings were probably better than I think, as I tend to see them merely as vehicles to accompany Sauternes. Christian threw in a Baba au rhum in a silver cloche, the signature pudding of Louis Quinze, and it was light and delicious. My wife's "coco-caramel delight" was a very rich ingot of caramel with a touch of gold leaf on top. Here again, the accompaniment saved the day: the vanilla lemon sorbet was outrageously good. I loved the JuranÇon pudding wine--a 2004 Domaine de Souch, from Marie Kattalin, which was well defined and not cloying.

The tables were thinning out by now. One of the balder guests whipping out his mobile telephone for a lengthy discussion. Our all-male neighbouring table were slightly getting out of hand--or perhaps just drunk. I inwardly winced for the waiter, who was called over to hear one inebriated lout lecture him: "Bet you didn't know that England makes better white wine than the Frogs". Perhaps the best option really is to get inside the VIP space station and blank out the other guests.

So, what to make of this entire meal? The sauces showed the true ability of the kitchen, with the exception of the overpowering ponzu dressing on the seared scallops. The service and all the staff were exceptional. Prices were high, but hardly bank-breaking at this level: three courses for £75, four for £95, and a tasting menu at £115 per person. At this very early stage, it didn't feel like a virtuoso performance, more like a series of dishes which, though well-executed, didn't hit as many high notes as I would have liked. It was almost as if the place was showing restraint in case it was accused of being over the top. You can be certain that Ducasse will effect any changes he considers necessary on one of his regular visits, but I can't see it nudging out my desire for a return to Monte Carlo.

Alain Ducasse at the Dorchester; tel 0207 629 8866; Park Lane London W1K 1QA.