Embassy, 29 Old Burlington Street, London W1 (020 7494 5660). Meal for two, including wine and service: £150
I have eaten Joël Antunès's food in a couple of places over the past few years and as a result I have reached a conclusion: he's a cook in search of a restaurant. The first time, following his return to London after years away, it was at a Park Plaza hotel at one end of Westminster Bridge, full of shiny surfaces, downlighters and girls with hair like day-old candy floss. As I said then, it felt like the place had mistaken the TV comedy-drama Hotel Babylon for a text book. I kept expecting Dexter Fletcher to turn up tableside in his concierge outfit, whispering out of the side of his mouth that he'd managed to locate the three Labrador puppies, the bucket of KY and the accommodating Ukrainian girls I'd asked for, and dispatched them to my room. No questions asked, know what I mean.
Antunès's food – big, gutsy, rustic things, served out of individual Le Creuset pots as if you were at Grandma's table and not in an OK! reader's fantasy – sat oddly there. I'm not sure it sits any easier in its new location, a very Mayfair joint called Embassy which has a members' club down below. The setting is certainly classier. There's a sommelier. There are eager young chaps with Gallic accents. There are linen tablecloths and no side plates because this is the kind of restaurant that doesn't care if you dribble the olive oil you dipped your bread in all over the place. They have an account with a top laundry.
Mostly there are prices: big ones. Let's be clear. I had a nice meal – in places a very nice one. The space is light and bright. You could mislay an afternoon at Embassy. Antunès's way with lamb is exactly my kind of way: hunks of shoulder with caramelised skin and jewels of fat, and a light stew of chickpeas and roasted peppers and a chilli kick. He seasons stuff properly. He's not at all prissy. He still serves food out of Le Creuset pots. But the prices have shot up with the move from Hotel Babylon. That lamb dish? £29. Add service of 12.5% and you get to over £32.50. And suddenly that lamb dish is all a bit "So what?" Kitchen Joël Antunès at Embassy only becomes a great restaurant if money is no object. Right now, that's not a good thing.
The problem, I think, is Antunès's background. He's a grand, high-end chef. He made his name at the Michelin-starred Les Saveurs in London back in the 1990s and then spent a few years working with glossy US hotel groups. They do things differently there. So now he's a grand hotel chef with a farmhouse Provençal menu, a bunch of chandeliers and a lot of Le Creuset.
Much of it really is good: his £14 take on the salad Niçoise is big and fresh, with hunks of marinated tuna and sharp anchovies. It comes in a nice glass bowl. We can all appreciate a nice glass bowl. A roast quail starter, with soupy lentils and a hint of cumin – a nod to the North African influences on the food of the French south – is equally robust. There's that lamb dish, and a big ceramic pot of ribbon pasta with seafood, with the aromatics of basil leaves so young they are probably still calling for their mothers.
If you found all this hidden away in a small, wooden-floored, tablecloth-free bistro, full of guttering candles and eager but slightly flustered Latvian waitresses, at two-thirds of the price, you'd hug yourself with glee and tell your friends. With Joël Antunès at Embassy you would hesitate before sending your friends. You would say: "It's very nice, but…" then try desperately to recall whether, for your pals, money's an issue or not. Wines by the glass are few and far between, and though the bottle price starts low it soon catches up with the neighbourhood.
Dessert doesn't help: £8 for a scoop of lemon sorbet with vodka leaves a sour taste. A bevelled log of peanut and chocolate parfait with caramel has a cute name – Le Kit Kat – but a decidedly uncute £9 price tag. And so it goes on. I desperately want to say nice things about a restaurant with Antunès at the stove, but I can't, not quite – for in this business context is everything. And here the context is all wrong.
Email Jay at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk or visit theguardian.com/profile/jayrayner for all his reviews in one place
