BY DOMINIC WIGHTMAN
The venue for this year’s much anticipated S*l*n**r Club dinner looked distinctly crummy on a Street View. The location of Hakkasan in Hanway Place also appeared somewhat familiar, as most quiet backdoor backstreets in that part of London tend to, to those who have done time as a student in the metropolis and been caught short on the way back to halls late at night from a club or bar.
In my bachelor days I used to live around the corner on Great Titchfield Street and rarely left W1. Perhaps it was to this dead end that I stumbled after an early morning exit from Bar Madrid. Either which way, this was not a location for best bib and tucker. Not like last year’s club event at that sleek place on Conduit Street, nor pre-Covid at the late Nikita’s. This year I opted for a blazer and jeans, with a pocket full of change to throw in the face of any knife-sporting thugs, as ubiquitous in the capital as lung-stricken cyclists these days thanks to that woeful Mr Khan.
After successfully sidestepping the pickpockets on Oxford Street and reveller vomit on the junction with Rathbone Place, I hacked it across to the venue, arriving punctually and unpunctured. A fellow club member was outside puffing on the last of a cigarette so we entered together, greeted by a big baboon of a bouncer before getting pointed down some dim-lit stairs to the restaurant’s reception-cum-cloakroom.
This Hakkasan (there’s another on Bruton Street, not to mention the foreign ones, from Istanbul to Vegas) was nightclub dark and, while the dark can oftentimes be enchanting, dark eating is not my cup of tea. I prefer to see what I am eating and those with whom I am eating. (Happily, the loos were illuminated not that I had much time to frequent them).
The eight of us were sardined at a table for which a £200 per head reservation deposit had been forked out. Then came the cocktails at £45 a go: Cocchi Americano infused with chamomile, Mezcal, a spoonful of Prunier caviar with Grey Goose vodka as base. Rather nice, but I should have gone for the gin base which was nicer (thanks for the sip, Helena).
A selection of ‘small eats’ were ordered: Peking duck with caviar, Wagyu beef shanghai dumplings and dim sum. Very tasty. I followed these up with a main of grilled Chilean sea bass in honey with stir-fried yellow French beans as a side.
I should also have opted for the charcoal grilled Japanese Wagyu beef fillet and taken it home in a doggy bag, as it was my year for the address and, unluckily for everybody, I was talking far too much to eat. Drinking wasn’t a problem – the club secretary was rather too keen on ordering fine wines and ordered a cellar-load of them.
We had been chewing away for 90 minutes when puds arrived. I do not know how to describe the signature dessert. It looked like a bomb, cost a bomb and was covered in gold leaf. It involved yet more caviar – breaking the Marmalade rule, never to spread it around excessively.
I don’t much like pudding anyway. Nor caviar.
The others seemed really impressed and talked lots of bollocks about it. I’d have preferred a waffer-thin mint by that stage in proceedings. MSG levels were mounting as fast as a devil can fly.
The upsides to this restaurant were the public-school educated waiters and waitresses who were articulate and intelligent. The downsides to Hakkasan Hanway Place were the darkness, the reservation deposits, the £2600 bill for six, the way the Mafiosi management – reminiscent of Eastern European minders in Pigalle – surrounded the table when the secretary queried items on the bill, and the way you are told you only have the table for two hours which forces you to gobble up at high speed.
It’s my turn to suggest the venue for next year. For the amount spent this year, I might as well propose some flights to sample the cuisine in Milan or Toulouse. More likely, we’ll end up at Rules.
To be blunt I’ve enjoyed Chinese meals more at Wing Hong in Honiton. Or in those tourist traps at Shanghai’s Pudong.
The reality is that you don’t need a silver fork or a golden pudding to eat good food. Nor do you need to chew against a stopwatch.
Six out of ten. (No offence to the club who are always at least a seven. As always the founders’ generosity sits at ten).
Then again Hakkasan Hanway Place has retained its Michelin star for 20 consecutive years and I’m a restaurant Luddite. The décor is cool, very dragon tattoo. Foodies may find Hakkasan amazing – well worth a try.
Dominic Wightman is Editor of Country Squire Magazine.