Arros QD, W1: ‘A blackened, very stingy paella’ – restaurant review | Grace Dent

The prices are as overcooked as the plato del día at this much-hyped restaurant – just don’t feel obliged to order the star dish

In a £4.3m paella restaurant in Fitzrovia, I’m on a chair that wobbles, far from the open kitchen, at a window overlooking filthy concrete bollards outside, and feeling oddly shortchanged. According to months of social media froth, Arros QD is a hot, new, glamorous, unmissable palace of paella. Artful, strategically placed prawns, expensive rugs, blazing pans and three-Michelin-starred Quique Dacosta with his very tidy beard have bombarded the London foodie ether.

Before the doors opened to the paying public, the welcome mat was unfurled to noisemakers who matter, which meant that soon even partially sighted Trafalgar Square pigeons knew Dacosta had come to transform forever the way Britain understands the one-pan comfort food often called “the Spanish Sunday roast”.