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The Heliot has a theatrical setting at London's Hippodrome casino, but the menu lacks glamour and focus
The Hippodrome casino, London WC2 (020 7769 8844) Meal for two, including wine and service: £120
The Heliot, the restaurant located on the balcony of London's Hippodrome casino, is named after a lion tamer called Claire Heliot who used to perform there in the 1900s, when it was a theatre, with a dozen big cats. Surely if you name a restaurant after a lion tamer, it suggests you're in for drama and excitement? Instead you get a rather odd corridor of a space, kitted out in authentic 1980s club-class airport lounge, with a menu that is so damn eager to please it's like a wet-lipped chorus gal in a leotard furiously auditioning for a part in a kick line. There are mains and grills and classics and salads; there are steaks and kebabs, burgers and fancy things that make you frown.
The last time I was at the Hippodrome it was the down-at-heel home to that fabulous burlesque cabaret, La Clique. Highlights included a stripper who withdrew a scarf from ever more ingenious places as she took her kit off, until even the thong was gone and there was only one place left from which she could retrieve it. That's the sort of thing you expect from a restaurant named after a lion tamer.
Now the building has been solidly restored. There is an impressive cabaret venue (occupied the night we were there by the grandson of Richard Rodgers, singing songs of moist profundity). It is hidden behind a huge curtain and on some nights they open it and pull back the retractable wall to join up the spaces. The night we were there the curtain stayed closed, so we felt like we were sitting in front of a stage waiting for nothing to happen.
Down below is the casino floor, studded with fake aluminium trees that look like something out of The Lorax. It is almost entirely occupied by the population of Chinatown around the corner. This is the way with casinos. If you ever want to find the Chinese in a random town, go to the casino. As a result I think they've missed a trick here. They should have just nicked a couple of the top Cantonese grilled meat chefs from across the way and started offering up platters of duck, char sui and pok choi to keep the key gaming clientele onsite. Instead there are various takes on the Chinese repertoire. There is a Peking duck consommé with duck dumplings. There's a depth of flavour to the broth, and the dumplings aren't at all bad. But as ever when you eat this sort of food so close to Chinatown, you can't help thinking you could get something better and cheaper than the £9.50 charged here. The same is true of their (very salty) salt and pepper squid with unnecessary splodges of smoked haddock brandade.
A main course of "mandarin roasted" sea bass with a cucumber salad and roasted rice was OK but in no way lived up to its billing. This was just a standard sautéed piece of fish, with a bit of tang to the salad. Elsewhere the menu is designed for those in various states of winning and losing. Millionaire's mac and cheese with gruyère and black truffle for £28 sounded like the sort of thing you might do if you were living it large. Or pretending to. I headed for the comfort food, clearly designed for those who'd had a bad night and wanted their mummies. A shepherd's pie made with lamb shank was a humongous portion in its own copper, under too loose a potato topping made with goat's cheese. It was an unnecessary fix for a dish that isn't broken; if I had been on a losing streak, this would have let me down further.
Dessert was very good: a coal-dark chocolate torte which managed to stay the right side of cloying, and a light lemon meringue tart with crisp pastry, a brisk filling and just the right volume of stiff peaks. Service was swift and charming, and the wine list not too punishing. It is clearly a professional operation. Right now, though, the Heliot is like an undisciplined gambler at the roulette table putting money on every number in the hope that something comes home. And as everybody knows, that ain't the way to make money.
Email Jay at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk or visit guardian.co.uk/profile/jayrayner for all his reviews in one place