The Savoy Grill

The Savoy Grill, The Savoy Hotel, Strand, London WC2 (020 7592 1600). Meal for two, including wine and service £150 The Gordon Ramsay organisation just can't help themselves. Give them a laser-guided rifle fixed on a neon-lit bullseye just 10ft away and they'd still shoot themselves in the foot. The truth is I wanted very much to write a positive review of Ramsay's reopened Savoy Grill. I may be as hungry for a sweaty, sweary tabloid narrative, full of big-name celebrity chefs declaring war on their own families, as the next unprincipled, scrofulous hack. And yet, for all the grotesque comedy of the Ramsay story – the way he sacked his own father-in-law, the open letter to his mother-in-law begging her not to abandon her own daughter, the loss of key lieutenants and the money problems at the restaurants – he knows what he is doing. A landmark like the Savoy Grill should be exactly the sort of restaurant his team can do well. And then this happens. I book a table for two at 8.15pm. The gal on the phone says "…and you will have your table until a quarter past ten." Eh? This meal is going to cost what's technically known as a whore's ransom and you're putting a stop watch on my dinner? "What happens if I'm not finished?" She pauses. "I'm not entirely sure, sir, but we do advise our guests that it's a two-hour turnaround." Is it? Is it really. When I get there I ask our waiter why they do this. "We need to turn the tables." Full marks for telling it like it is. Here's the thing. The only reason you'd tell customers that they must give the table back after two hours is if you don't think, in the run of things, that you can serve a meal in that time. If you can, then you don't need to mention it, do you. Generally a restaurant should make you feel they are grateful for the custom; this is designed to make you feel grateful for being allowed in. It makes the whole business of feeding people look shabby, grubby and obsessed only with the bottom line. Arguably, in terms of his current media profile, Gordon Ramsay has got this element of the venture spot on. It's so unnecessary because there is so much to like about the new Savoy Grill, not least the fact it's not very new at all. As with the rest of the glorious hotel on London's Strand, the renovation has been faithful. It has shine and it has polish and it has glamour. There are gorgeous lacquered panels in shades of conker, and distressed mirrors and bulging, pendulous chandeliers like giant crystal breasts and sexy Mad Men style booths. All it lacks is a light fug of cigarette smoke, pirouetting from a length of Rothmans Royal, clasped between dangerously scarlet-nailed fingers. The long menu reads well, too, better than almost any other Ramsay menu in years. It is classy comfort food, a list of old fashioned things which you just know that, like the room, have only been given a lick of modern polish. There is lobster bisque and Waldorf salad made with Barkham blue cheese and salted walnuts. There is smoked salmon and baked-egg cocotte and Dover sole. A selection of grills promises big lumps of serious meat and at lunchtime, a roast roams the room on a trolley. Nothing here looks over elaborate. This, of course, is a curse and a blessing. It's a blessing because this is the stuff we really want to eat. A pork, veal and pistachio pie with pickles is cut table-side, and it is a glorious, bronzed and burnished block of a thing. It's the sort of item you want to install in your living room as a piece of furniture in which to store keepsakes. Not only does it look good. It's also a great pie: fine meat, soft, rich jelly, proper pastry and a jolly selection of pickles, when you can harry the waiter into putting enough of them on to your plate. The curse of comfort food is that there is nowhere to hide. Omelette Arnold Bennett – a confection of eggs and smoked haddock and hard cheese (cheddar or the like) and cream, burnished under the grill – was invented here for the writer and is less a recipe than an outrageous idea. It should arrive at the table on the dish upon which it was grilled, so that you can scrape at the crispiest bits. Here they have somehow managed to replate so it arrives as a desperately clean and tidy disc. It is too well-mannered, an outrageous concoction that is trying to hide its roots. It reminds me of Woody Allen's gag about sex only being dirty when it's done properly. Omelette Arnold Bennett is only dirty when it's done properly. We are at its birthplace, and it isn't. The same game of two halves occurs at the mains. A "Dingly Dell" pork chop, cut thick, grilled expertly, is a truly wonderful thing. My companion cuts off the ribbon of fat. I steal it. A Cornish fish stew is far less so. The main ingredients – clams, mussels, a bit of mullet and so on – are of good quality and cooked well. The sauce is a thick, creamy affair and just completely wrong. It needs bite and kick, a rough edge or two. Instead, like the omelette, it is trying to be on best behaviour. A side of broccoli with toasted garlic is overcooked. Another of cauliflower cheese is completely forgotten, and only just worth waiting for when it arrives. If the Savoy Grill does not give me the best cauliflower cheese I've ever eaten I'm not entirely sure what it's for. Desserts disappoint. A flambéed baked Alaska is a terrific bit of theatre, the boozy flame licking at the singed meringue peaks. But it has sat too long in the freezer before reaching the table and the blood orange ice cream inside is therefore rock solid and tasteless. A rum baba is dry. And those are five words I hope never to have to type again. Service is merely OK. They don't always recall who ordered what. That side dish was forgotten. And at these latitudes – a euphemism for prices; starters are mostly a tenner or more, mains nearer £30 – OK is nowhere near good enough. For what it's worth, we finish in an hour and 50 minutes and we do not feel rushed. That two-hour speech wasn't only insulting, it was unnecessary. The curiosity is that all of these criticisms amount to fine tuning. They could dump the overt table-turning policy, train their waiters properly, tinker with the plating of the Omelette Arnold Bennett, get the baked Alaskas out of the freezer a little ahead of time. The executive chef here, Stuart Gillies – who has just been appointed managing director of Gordon Ramsay Holdings – is one of the most experienced and skilled people still remaining within the Gordon Ramsay organisation and he has the ability to do this. That said, things have been chaotic of late. The boss has been a little distracted. Indeed, given the maelstrom around Ramsay these days, the most surprising thing about the Savoy Grill is that it isn't atrocious. And that, my friends, is the very definition of damning with faint praise.