Aurora must learn to glow

10 April 2012

This review was first published in November 1999

My sister once worked as a secretary for Sir John Betjeman at his house in Cloth Fair (now, I believe, like everywhere else a restaurant). Just before she left his employ, the former poet laureate took her to his favourite restaurant, the dining room of The Great Eastern Hotel. At the time, the early Seventies, having just started as restaurant critic of the Evening Standard, I thought I should have a look and went for lunch.

I remember a grandiosity and starchiness that was starting to crinkle and fray round the edges. The mouldings and intricate plasterwork in the lofty room were like icing on Miss Havisham's wedding cake. The food was just as irrelevant. A period that embraced the great days of the railway was about to shuffle off centre stage.

It would be more than delightful to have Sir John's rhyming reaction to AURORA, the renovation by Sir Terence Conran of the main dining room of The Great Eastern Hotel. Opened last week, along with the brasserie Terminus and the GE Club, destined eventually to be one of six catering outlets in the building, Aurora is at the heart and head of the hotel's gastronomic ambition.

A listed interior, carefully reconstructed in terms of its murals, inlaid tiled floor and stained-glass dome, seems to have put a crimp in Conran's undeniable talent for restaurant design. Unusually and uncomfortably low tables and snug chairs - too snug I would have thought for some corporate bottoms - which pitch the diner either elbows on the table or reclining back, a drab lighting scheme not rescued either by the handsome ceramic chandeliers or tall candles on the tables, railway carriage-style antimacassars sporting the surprisingly feeble sunrise logo and a gloom engendered by a funereal presence of marble do not create a buzz but nor do they allow the magic of the glory days to return. Perhaps when the hotel is complete - the scheduled date is February 2000 the room will settle into its rightful place at the centre of operations, but last week there was a sort of Brigadoon atmosphere, a sensation enhanced by bevies of staff wandering lost and confused.

The hotel's executive chef is Jonathan Wright who has worked most formatively at Raymond Blanc's Le Manoir aux Quat' Saisons where he became head chef. Aurora's head chef, Craig Thomas, has worked with Marco Pierre White, Jean-Christophe Novelli and John Burton-Race. These names, more than the Great Eastern's tradition, explain the ambitious - and ambitiously priced - cooking, with its emphasis on complexity and dramatic, etiolated presentation. A little amuse-bouche referred to as bouillabaisse, but in depth, resonance and richness closer to a shellfish bisque, set a standard and made an announcement about culinary classicism that the rest of the meal struggled to emulate.

Tian of Cornish crab, tempura soft-shell crab and chilled lemon grass veloute was clever-clogs but ultimately less satisfying than crab left to its own delectable devices. Roast cepes with confit of shallots, cream of Jerusalem artichoke and parsley jus had snails added for good measure and presumably to contribute further to the sensation of wandering along a woodland floor. Red mullet confit in lemon oil with clams, oyster cream and Oscietra caviare lost all its impact by the fish fillet erring on the side of rawness.

Of the equally labour-intensive, showy main courses the better ones were the simpler assemblies: roast duck with figs and poached chicken on a sheet of Savoy cabbage napped with a luxurious veloute. Whether the kitchen can keep up the tempo and whether this sort of time-consuming food - on both sides of the swing door - is what City folk want are two pertinent questions about Aurora. I looked at the room and hoped the ghosts of silver trolleys bearing roasts would materialise. I dare say Sir John Betjeman would have felt the same.

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