Sitwell stirs it up

William has mixed feelings at Claridge’s ‘While the poussin was the ugliest-looking piece of poultry I have ever seen, it was exceptionally good’

William visits Davies and Brook at Claridge’s

Claridge’s has a new restaurant. It’s called Davies and Brook (named after the London streets it’s adjacent to), and it’s in the space that Gordon Ramsay once occupied and then more recently Simon Rogan. When Ramsay ran it, the room was a mix of rich golds, red carpets and soft lighting, which created a mood of romantic and extravagant dining. There were private areas, and diners chomped through lobster and beef Wellington.

The room is very different now. None of that old fuddy-duddy hotel restaurant nonsense because it needs to appeal to the jet set. After all, the chef, Daniel Humm, is a star from New York. Which is why, presumably, it has been designed to feel like a first-class airport lounge in Qatar. The intimacy is gone. The lighting is quite bright and it’s all creamy whites and dashes of pale blue, but with stark imagery of small framed landscapes around the room, which on closer inspection are all hills or mountains that resemble breasts. I suppose it’s a sort of statement that says, ‘Really, we’re not a stuffy restaurant, we do tit jokes.’

I booked a table for two, on the restaurant’s insistence, at 7.15pm. Then a few days later I went crazy and tried to make it for three, but the woman I spoke to was having none of it. ‘Can’t you just add a chair?’ I pleaded. ‘It’s a table for two,’ she said. ‘We can’t make it three. We’d have to give you another table and there aren’t any, unless you come at 6.30 or 9pm.’

I gnashed my teeth. Then on arrival gnashed them so much they nearly broke. Our table for two was a large rectangle with a chair opposite a banquette. We could have put five people around it. And while the restaurant did fill up, it was never completely rammed and there were larger tables that remained empty all evening.

But our grrrrrring did calm as dinner swept over us. A freebie scallop with a dash of horseradish was sublime, and came with a hit of thicker scallop stock. But the scallop butter was weird. I think butter should remain barbed-wire, watchtower, searchlight and machine-gun protected. It shouldn’t taste of fish.

My starter of bass ceviche was topped with moon-shaped curls of avocado in pale and dark-green stripes. It was miraculous in design and the cleanest, most novel thing I have tasted for a while. I then ate what I would describe as a phallus of aubergine. Clever it certainly was, but it had a rubbery spring to its texture and none of the char of aubergine that I have a thing for and, in the context of the wall art, I reckon the less said about it the better.

But while my main course of poussin was the ugliest-looking piece of poultry I have ever seen – a leg injured in an explosion, all swollen and torched – with its stuffing of Parmesan, lemon and fennel, it was exceptionally, uniquely good. As was the soft, luscious, dreamily sweet and creamy milk and honey pudding.

As for service, it was almost too attentive, although we enjoyed the banter with Amber, the sommelier, who fixated on the versatility of my guest’s sweater, and had to be persuaded to let me finish the wine we’d ordered. ‘I thought we had a deal and you were leaving it for me,’ she said flirtatiously.

Humm, who stalked the room in chunky and spotless trainers, is a graceful swan of a cook. You know the legs are racing, the technique is deep, complicated and complex but the effect is food of clean, calm wonder. Like a great, his talents will have you lying awake wondering about those subtle layers of flavour and how on earth he does it.

But would I return to Humm? Hmmm…