Gridiron, London: ‘So nearly but not quite’ – restaurant review

It has a good chef and a promising menu, but Gridiron on Park Lane never escapes its setting

Gridiron, Como Metropolitan Hotel, 19 Old Park Lane, London W1K 1LB (020 7447 1080). Snacks, starters £7-£25; mains £20-£40; desserts £8-£9; wines from £29

Standalone restaurants in hotels are an act of shared illusion. Both the people who run them and those who eat in them have to pretend it’s a real place with its own robust identity, not just that space to the right of reception which, in another life, could have been a function room booked out for presentations by moist-lipped salespeople with timeshares to flog.