In any other top chef’s mitts, this new hotel restaurant could have been a horrible mess, but Jason Atherton has come up trumps again
The Betterment sounds like a four-day Californian wellness retreat where everyone floats about in white, floor-length linen and a hose is sporadically placed up your bottom to wash out all the bad juju. The Betterment sounds like a Gwyneth Paltrow home-learning seminar series, where for $800 you can learn six life-enhancing ways to arrange a radish plate.
The Betterment is, in fact, the new restaurant from Jason Atherton, who, like the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, now also has an empire that the sun never sets on. Atherton is everywhere in London, and he’s in Shanghai, Dubai, Doha, New York, Cebu and St Moritz, too; doing everything all of the time, excelling at innovative, dramatic cocktails and luxury dining that doesn’t befuddle. He spreads himself thin and aims big, never truly messing up, and never looking anything less than bushy-tailed and dapper in public. This has led me to wonder if there are three, or possibly four, Jason Athertons out there, and if so, one of them is hellbent on incessantly winding up his former employer, Gordon Ramsay.
Related: Sunday with Jason Atherton: ‘It’s all about rest, relaxation and ice-cream’
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