The Goring dining room reopens with intriguing kitchen table concept – review
The Michelin starred dining room at The Goring is getting guests closer than ever to the kitchen – but it’s not a shiny customer-facing one, it’s the real one in the basement, writes Adam Bloodworth
The latest attempt to prove that the London restaurant industry is an ever-changing and terribly exciting beast is from The Goring, who are now serving Michelin starred food on the wrong side of the swinging service doors.
We had barely touched our champagne and were just getting comfy in chairs my guest described as having “Titanic vibes” when we were plucked by the sommelier and taken through to the pot washing sink. Not the glamorous welcome you’d expect from a Michelin starred restaurant that style-wise almost certainly would have been rejected by Buckingham Palace for being too regal, but it’s the latest attempt to get diners uncomfortably close to chefs.
Kitchen tables have long shouted about hauling guests nearer to the action, which has always felt bizarre: who wants to sit near a probably angry shouty man when you could be in the silent oasis of the restaurant, literally designed as a safe space away from them? This one is even more eccentric because the kitchen is in the basement, and getting to it requires going down sobering back-of-house corridors and past staff rotas. This isn’t some pretty kitchen table adjacent to the restaurant, basically a private dining room, this is a warts-and-all kitchen table experience in a place that, let’s face it, us lot should probably never go.
There is mottled black and white functional plastic flooring — like there is in every kitchen — and the gentle hum of stressed but disciplined service staff. Clever sound proofing means the clashing pans doesn’t reach the restaurant floor, but even so, it’s weirdly serene. If they’re putting on a show, they’re very good actors. As much as I hoped to see chefs losing the plot then stifling anger, I think they might actually just be nice people. Who’d have thought? We watched the cooking for a while, all genteel requests falling on polite ears, then left them to it. (The poor besweated team must have whooped when we stopped watching them!)
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Unlike the kitchen, the restaurant is sublime, like the Goring hotel itself. Opened in March 1910, it was the first in the world with a private bathroom and central heating in every room. Red and green whacks of colour are the headlines from the spring 2024 refurbishment by Russell Sage Studio, giving the century-old dining room the shine and colouration of an everlasting gobstopper.
Vibes-wise, it’s a more intimate Claridge’s, tucked down a reassuringly hard-to-find Belgravia backstreet. It’s stupendously posh, but not stifling, with plenty of natural light coming in through the windows: the oak trees are so close the branches feel as if they’re joining us for dinner.
To the seasonal, ingredient-led British food by Executive Chef Graham Squire, formerly of Claridge’s. A starter of eggs with native lobster, caviar and roasted tomato looked like contemporary art, but in an appealing not pretentious way. It had a boisterous acidic kick from the tomato that kept me on my toes, the harshness offsetting the eco-system of softness laid on by the eggs and lobster. For mains, the tender lamb saddle was a knees-up of the best of British: asparagus, lamb fat potato and smoked anchovy.
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My guest had a perfectly soft Dover sole with another of Squire’s provocateur additions, pickled Muscat grapes, which spun the fish in a modern way. The sommelier paired the food with baller burgundy.
The Goring were some of the first to keep the Edwardians warm and eversince, The Goring has tried to innovate. It’s fun to see their kitchens, but better to luxuriate in the new dining room, one of the most glamorous in the city.
Book by calling 020 7769 4475, emailing diningroom@thegoring.com or visit thegoring.com