Telephone: 020 7836 3111
Address: Conrad Gallagher, 179 Shaftesbury Avenue, London W1.
Dinner for two, including wine and service, at least £120
Wafting from the sound system in the men's toilets at Conrad Gallagher, the new eponymous restaurant from one of Dublin's most fêted chefs, was the famous recording of Martin Luther King's 'I have a dream' speech. If ever there was a way to point up the acute soullessness of a place, this was it; it was as if King's passion was sucking the life from the place and scaring away the punters. Perhaps the wealthy backers of Mr Gallagher's enterprise chose to launch in high summer specifically because they did not want to be troubled by too many customers while they found their feet. The effect, in the broad, sepia-coloured ground-floor lounge, with its rows of empty chocolate-coloured leather chairs, was truly dismal. With all that fresh, chemically cleaned animal skin making the room smell like the inside of a new Ford Mondeo (with extra executive trim), one's thoughts quickly turned to escape.
Here, that leads you, like Dante, only downwards: the dining room has been placed in a basement of hollow, empty spaces and hard, ill-lit surfaces. I can only presume that the grim environment - which may work in winter but does not work in summer - has already affected the mood of the staff. Because, for me, Conrad Gallagher's new restaurant offers the very worst of a particular kind of 'exclusive' service.
There has been a lot of talk in the restaurant trade recently of a terrible shortage of skilled kitchen staff for the increasing number of ambitious £60-a-head restaurants that have opened in London and elsewhere. Less has been said about the shortage of skilled front-of-house staff, but it seems to me that the problem is just as acute: it takes real empathic talent to be able to provide the kind of slick-but-unobtrusive service that high prices demand, without it slipping into something horribly servile, fawning or simply gloomy. At Conrad Gallagher, it felt as if everybody had learned of the deaths of their mothers just before opening time.
Long-faced waiters fluttered hither and yon, attending to the task of lifting a cover off a dish as though viewing a body down at the morgue. And blimey, they were slow about it - about everything - so that an enforced hiatus in the conversation became a yawning chasm. Then there were those things they were simply bad at, like trying to lift a bread roll out of a basket with a spoon and fork, silver-service-style. It was like watching a three-year-old trying get the hang of using chopsticks for the first time.
Most of all, there was the wine and water issue. I have always hated having my glass filled. Partly it's because it has always struck me as a distinctly unsubtle ruse to get you to finish the bottle and order more. The fact is, I drink wine faster than most people. If waiters keep filling my glass, my companion generally ends up with less than their due. Added to that, I object to the damned intrusion of someone appearing at my side every seven minutes.
Still, convention is convention; that's the way things work in expensive restaurants. It's my responsibility to tell whoever brings the wine that we'll do it ourselves from here on in. It's their responsibility to pass on the information to the rest of the room. At Conrad Gallagher, no less than five different people came to the table to try to fill us up. One of them practically started arguing with me about it, so that I was about to snatch the bottle back when he finally gave up and sloped off. Some might argue that the staff were merely guilty of over-attentiveness; I see it as a particular kind of laziness. They couldn't be fagged to work out what it was this particular table wanted and needed. At £60 a head, that's the least you expect.
Keen-eyed readers will have noticed something so far missing from this review: any mention of the food. I was tempted to leave it that way. As is so often the way when things go wrong, it was the memory of the really poor service that stayed with me, rather than what we ate. But you probably want to know whether the food was any good and, like a good waiter, my job is to serve your needs.
In the promotional material, the cooking at Conrad Gallagher is described as 'modern Irish'. This is one of those very silly phrases used simply to carve out a non-existent niche; as far as I'm aware, seared scallops and foie gras, which is a starter here, has never been a staple dish of County Cork, or anywhere else in Ireland for that matter. It is, though, pretty much a staple of classic French restaurants now, which is what Conrad Gallagher is. My companion, who had the scallops-foie gras dish, thought it rather lovely, though I question whether the goose liver really should have been stone-cold in the middle.
My ravioli of langoustine was fine, but the liquor with it was more than a little underseasoned. A main course of guinea foul with a parsley risotto was much better. The bird was crispy and salty on the outside and soft within. A dish of pan-fried sea bass, however, was overcooked and dry. Presentation is generally a little weird, with ingredients scattered over heavy frosted plates, like strangers at a party waiting to be introduced, and prices are high: around £12 for starters, £20 for main courses. Then, of course, there is a 12.5 per cent service charge automatically added to the bill. Despite that, when my credit-card receipt arrived, the space for an additional tip had been left open, probably in the hope that I would add some more. I wasn't at all surprised. And, funnily enough, I didn't.
·Contact Jay Rayner on jay.rayner@observer.co.uk
