'This is far too lavish to be called boutique. It makes the Sanderson across the road look a bit Katie Price'
Iam dazzled by the beauty of this room, and I don't dazzle easily. It's breathtaking. We've approached via a lobby that makes other hotel lobbies look like Partridge-era Travelodges, and sink into the worst seat in the house: at the back, by the kitchen, the poor pal having nothing to look at but the walls and my mush.
But what walls: towering, soaring, exuberant, with frills of snowy stucco, every inch covered in gilt-framed art, the different-sized paintings and photographs interlocking like some kind of aesthete's Tetris. There's gold, too, in the backlighting for the twinkling bar. And vast, arched windows with gauze drapes, a Buñuel dreamscape. Of course, as with every grand café, there's a section for those-and-such-as-those: cappuccino-coloured leather banquettes down the centre, like luxury waltzers. If only.
Berners Tavern, in the supremely glamorous new London Edition hotel, is the second collaboration (after Istanbul) between Marriott and Ian Schrager, of Studio 54 notoriety and the man credited with inventing the boutique hotel. This is far too big and lavish – a rumoured £33m spent – to be described as boutique. It makes Schrager's Sanderson across the road, once the glittering height of metropolitan chic, look a bit Katie Price. Shrager has described it as "good old-fashioned good taste".
Our food is every bit as lovely. Currently as ubiquitous as kale, chef Jason Atherton is le patron– not actually cooking there, but with his signature style sprawled all over the menu: local produce; Med nudging against true Brit; rich, sticky, carby things in little saucepans (halibut served with a spot-on squid ink risotto, topped with crisp fried calamari). There are items served in jars; twists on comfort food – macaroni cheese that just isn't, it's fat paccheri pasta sorta-carbonara with a crunch of fried cauliflower. The dish that sums it all up is a deep-fried Clarence Court duck egg, a sausageless scotch, its orange yolk oozy and rich, on "mushy" peas of equally vivid hue and taste, with crisps of Cumbrian ham. Cocktails are made with "Coco Pops milk" and served in glass cartons with retro straws. It's the Atherton look, and it goes beautifully with its surroundings: a tingly mix of fun and fabulousness. Apologies: enthusiasm has made me come over all fashion-speak.
Anyway, I go back for lunch, and in the intervening couple of weeks it seems to have morphed into something a little less Schrager and a little more, well, Marriott. The art is less Wallace Collection and a little more Vettriano and The Range. Tabletops already look scuffed. And the food is far more lacklustre; perhaps it, too, benefits from clever night-time lighting. One pal orders the duck egg again, but this time it has a stiff, mass-catered quality. The crab that comes on braised leeks with brioche crumbs is curiously devoid of actual crabbiness, as though they've used pasteurised shellfish. Burgers, too, are weirdly polite, perfectly imprisoned by lovely, burnished brioche buns, no meaty juices to dribble down wrists, none of the minerality or funk I expect from "aged Scottish beef". And it comes with the most stoopidarse salad I've seen for a long time: chilly, frilly leaves, flower-arranged in a tin vase and glooped with dressing.
Even if I do love the comedy of serving a black pudding toastie – yes, the full Breville – with an emerald soup of potato and parsley plooked with Dorset snails, it all feels like a bathetic second date where the over-enthusiasm of the first suddenly seems a tiny bit embarrassing.
I'm not suggesting for a second that Berners Tavern isn't still a dazzler. It is. Service – for which Atherton, Schrager and Marriott are all well known – is brilliant, clued-up, just the right side of pally, not thrown by even the curviest of curve ball. And so, polite burger or not, I'm going back. I'm a sucker for a bit of the ol' razzle-dazzle. And one evening I'll score one of those waltzer banquettes if it kills me.
• Berners Tavern 10 Berners Street, London W1, 020-7908 7979. Open all week, lunch noon-2.30pm (11am-4pm brunch Sun); dinner 6-10.30pm. About £45-£50 a head, plus drinks and service.
Food 7/10
Atmosphere night 9/10, day 7/10
Value for money 7/10
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