Telephone: 020 7839 3774
Address: L'Oranger, 5 St James's Street, London SW1.
Lunch for two, £70.
I was talking recently to a restaurateur about the state of business in these bleak times and he said, candidly, that his trade was seriously down. A recent economic forecast claimed that during the current slowdown the restaurant sector should suffer far less than it did during the recession of the early 90s, when food businesses went to the wall in droves. The reason, the report said, was that restaurant-going has become far more of a habit in Britain than it had been; that it would be one of the later things to go in the household budget when people started cutting back. It may well be true in general, but try telling that to the top end of the trade which is already suffering. Prices are simply too high, my restaurateur said, and will have to come down. He would be cutting his soon. 'Seventy pounds for two is a perfect price for top end dining, isn't it?' he said, which is ironic because the only way you could currently get out of his place at £70 for two, is if one of you ate the other.
Still, he's right. Prices at the top end, now regularly between £140 and £180 for two before you even start climbing the financial Everest of the wine list, are out of control and unsustainable. There is, however, already a way to get out of these places for around the magic £70 mark. It's called going at lunchtime. Expensive restaurants need footfall throughout the day, even if it makes them little or no profit and right now there are some spectacular deals on offer at London's fancier places.
Richard Corrigan's Lindsay House is offering three courses for £23. The same deal at Petrus is £26. At the Capital Hotel it is £26.50. The Gavroche charges £40 for three courses, but that includes half a bottle of wine each. The very best deal right now, however, has to be at Foliage at the Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park Hotel: three courses for £25.50 including two glasses of wine. The cooking is spectacular. Add a bottle of water and 12.5 per cent service and you'll be out for less than £65 for two.
I have already been to Foliage, and gushed outrageously about its fabulous pleasures. So this time I decided to go to the highly regarded L'Oranger on St James's Street where the price is £20 for two courses and £25 for three at lunchtimes, as against £35 and £39.50 in the evening. If you were looking for the quintessential grand London restaurant right now, L'Oranger and its lunchtime clientele, would probably be it: a little wood panelling, a Georgian-style half-domed ceiling, a bit of plumpness about both the cushions and the diners. Comfortable, then, and just a little pompous, too. Inside the door stands a tray of French cheeses, so ripe they appear to be making a bid for freedom. As a result you enter the restaurant to the smell of food. It is a simple and pleasing touch, and points up the French classicism practised here.
I know some people fear they risk getting shoddy goods if they opt for the cheaper menu du jour rather than the carte at lunchtime. There are no such worries at L'Oranger. The only menu is the two/three course deal and unlike, say, the Lindsay House where there are just two choices at each course, here there are eight. For my starter I went for salt cod with a potato tartlet. This was a lovely combination: big fat flakes of properly desalinated fish were piled high upon a crisp tart, rich with a powerful cheese. My companion, John, ordered bone marrow in a veal broth. 'This is probably as out there as this place gets,' he said. 'The inside of bones in a broth made from baby cow.' Doesn't that make it sound attractive? It was a soothing mixture of soft and light textures.
My main course was again simple and well executed: a gamey leg of rabbit confit, with wild mushrooms and slices of steamed tomato to cut through it all. John went for an equally accomplished fillet of sea bream. The skin was crisp and came sprinkled with flakes of sea salt and slices of olive. To drink we each went for a wine by the glass: a Sancerre for me and a Syrah for him. The wine list is vast and what might best be described as optimistically priced. If we'd really gone for it we would have blown our £70 budget. In any case this was lunchtime on a school day.
Despite the serious bargains on offer the room was no more than half full and, as so often happens when restaurants aren't at full steam, the service was more than a little slack. There were such long gaps between courses that we almost felt we didn't have time for puddings. But hey, they were only an extra £4.50. How could we pass on that? We went for the two quickest which, we were told, were a lemon and thyme crème caramel and an apple crumble. What we got was two crème caramels - another sign of that erratic service - but we didn't have time to send one back. The crème really had been infused with the flavour of lemon and thyme, although we were neither of us sure whether the effect was desirable. We found ourselves admiring rather than loving it.
Now if this mix up followed by an unimpressive pudding had come at the end of a meal costing £150 we would have been more than a little disappointed. We would have been beating waiters and chefs round the head with their bread sticks. (Rather good ones, as it happens.) Instead it came at the end of a meal costing half that so frankly we weren't that bothered. And the final bill? £69.19. I told you it could be done for £70.
Contact Jay Rayner on jay.rayner@observer.co.uk
