3/10
Address: The Cumberland, Great Cumberland Place, London W1
Telephone: 020-7479 3838
Open: Daily, lunch, noon-2.30pm; dinner, 5.30-10pm
Price: Around £40 per head with wine
Wheelchair access and disabled WC
In a culinary age long ago, not long after Gordon Ramsay hung up his football boots, a cook with the same initials arrived on the telly like a gust of fresh and pioneering air. He loved football, too, and could barely whisk an egg without reference to Manchester United and, back in the mid-90s infancy, there was something richly engaging about Gary Rhodes, with his spiky hair and urchin persona. Most impressive of all, as he went about reinventing gutsy dishes little seen since Mrs Beeton, was his zest for great cooking.
Today, however, the only thing about this champion franchiser that seems zesty is testing the boundaries of the Trade Descriptions Act, and the latest venture to entice punters is Rhodes W1, a funereal presence in the Cumberland hotel near Marble Arch.
Bathed in an eerie blue light of the sort described by those newly returned from an out-of-body experience, the uniquely offputting lobby may explain why Rhodes had given the place a wide berth the day a friend and I went for lunch. Even so, anyone who goes to a restaurant called Rhodes W1 is vaguely entitled to expect Rhodes to be in the kitchen. The technically correct name for this restaurant, then, would be Rhodes Helped Compile The Menu And Pops In Every Now And Again To Keep An Eye On Things W1 - not very catchy, perhaps, and a bit unwieldy so far as the letterheads go, but it might be a bit nearer the mark.
In its defence, this one is less ghastly than the last I went to, a thankfully defunct directors' dining room on the premises of catering giant Sodexho, to which Rhodes had sold a portion of his soul. But it's still a shocker, displaying a complacency that straddles the borderline with contempt for the few expense-account punters it seems to attract.
With angled glass slats in place of a wall, red draylon banquettes, a stone floor and spotlighting, the room achieves a level of clinical soullessness unusual in hotel restaurants, and the decor is the second best thing. The best, by miles, is a charming serving staff (especially an enchanting Portuguese woman), wasted here.
As for the food, this ranges from the sullenly competent to the sloppily awful. The one pleasure was a dish that required no more work than being plonked on to crockery: a generous helping of good charcuterie (the salamis were outstanding) served with a lavish bowl of olives, artichoke hearts, cornichons and caperberries (£7.75). My friend's starter, meanwhile, was laughably mislabelled "Tomatoes". What turned up was a small bowl of bland, white tomato soup, inevitably frothed to suggest a cat with a gastric disorder; a tomato and sweet pepper mousse with the overpowering flavour of a McDip; a stale, soggy bruschetta; and, confusingly, a deep-fried ball of tasteless mozzarella better suited for use in repairing a punctured tyre. "It's a pity," said my friend forlornly. "I like tomatoes."
Were our main courses to make it to the final of the Antony Worrall Thompson Mediocrity Cup 2005, the finish would match the Ashes series for unbearable tension. A white onion and pea risotto (in fact a starter, at £6.75) came with seared scallops and won itself a grudging "OK". Braised oxtails (£16) is a venerable Rhodes signature dish, but when served this tepid and this overcooked (albeit with impeccable mash), the only thing it has any business signing is a police confession. As for a side dish listed as "English leaves", charging three quid for six moderately fresh but oversalted romaine lettuce leaves makes the triple mark-up on the wine look like philanthropy.
Warm lemon and almond cake was fine, but came with lemon curd cream so acidic you could have dissolved a human limb in it, while my "crispy pasta 'rags and scraps'" was another example of sloppy titling. "Someone went to the doughnut shop and swept up the remains before baking them in sawdust" would fit the facts better.
Why Rhodes persists in devaluing the currency of his reputation like this when he must have plenty of dosh, I'm not sure, but it's high time he stopped whoring himself to large, impersonal firms to whom the notion of taking joy in food means nothing. A Rhodes by any other name mightn't smell as sweet to his bank manager, but it might just rescue him from sinking ever further into the hell's kitchen of corporate branding.
