Alain Ducasse at The Dorchester

Alain Ducasse at the Dorchester |

The Alain Ducasse new chocolate Manufacture is now open in Paris.

Our A la carte menu features an emblematic dessert made with the purest dark chocolate from the Manufacture.

http://www.alainducasse-dorchester.com

Alain Ducasse at The Dorchester | Alain Ducasse

The Alain Ducasse new chocolate Manufacture is now open in Paris.

Our A la carte menu features an emblematic dessert made with the purest dark chocolate from the Manufacture.

Alain Ducasse at the Dorchester - Wikipedia

At the time of opening, Alain Ducasse at the Dorchester was one of 27 restaurants around the world operated by Ducasse.

[8] As of 2012, a seven-course dinner costs around £180 per person,[6] and the restaurant has also recently added a three-course express lunch option which regularly changes the dishes on offer.

The food critic went into the restaurant with high expectations, describing Alain Ducasse opening a London-based restaurant as the moment when "God comes to town".

[3] Food critic Jay Rayner reviewed Ducasse at the Dorchester for The Guardian, wrote that it was disappointing overall given Ducasse's history, having eaten at the Ducasse restaurant in Paris.

[8] Food critics from Time Out reviewed the restaurant's express lunch menu in 2011, giving it four out of five stars and describing one dish, a rhubarb, strawberry and vanilla millefeuille, as having "sang out [the] meal on a high note".

Alain Ducasse

Inspired by the changing seasons and the fresh provenance of his produce, executive chef Jean-Philippe Blondet has designed a stunning menu celebrating the season’s best ingredients in a collection of delicious dishes.

In addition, the Menu Jardin is a colourful and bespoke selection of entirely vegetarian dishes.

Alain Ducasse at The Dorchester

For the latest in our Famous London Restaurants series we visit Alain Ducasse at the Dorchester, still a giant of London restaurants after 10 years on the scene.

The backstory: Alain Ducasse has more three Michelin starred restaurants than London does.

There’s a decent case that Mr Ducasse (really, really not an ‘Al’) is the most successful and decorated chef in the world, and expectations were heavenly when he opened up here – literally, with one writer declaring his arrival ‘God coming to town’ – but reviews were middling, not exceptional, the fanfare there, but muted.

Our table was a choir of wine glasses: the house champagne is jolly decent, a 1998 Rioja from Luis Marín Diez capably managed both the peanut and parsnip and the venison, though it nothing on the straightforward pleasure of the Domaine Denis Mortet’s 2013 ‘Mes Cinq Terroirs’.

Surprisingly young crowd, too: monied, this spot, but not God’s waiting room, despite the looks.

Classics Revisited: Alain Ducasse at the Dorchester

A restaurant’s signature dish doesn’t always tell you very much about what to expect from the rest of the experience.

Menus change with the seasons, restaurants evolve over time and the pressure for the kitchen to dish out the same plate year after year can become a yoke around a chef’s neck, as if Christian Dior had been expected to send the New Look down the catwalk for every collection.

This early hit no longer represents who I am, a chef might say.

But in the case of Alain Ducasse at The Dorchester, which is celebrating is 10th anniversary this month, "Baba like in Monte-Carlo" tells you absolutely everything you need to know about the experience.

True, compared to Ducasse’s Le Louis XV restaurant at the Hotel de Paris in Monaco, the dining room’s coffee-and-cream colour scheme is surprisingly understated, but in every other respect, the sotto voce luxury on show is the embodiment of if you have to ask, you can’t afford it.

Jay Rayner reviews Alain Ducasse at the Dorchester, Park Lane ...

But Alain Ducasse's London restaurant is a feast of overwhelming underachievement, says Jay Rayner Meal for two, including wine and service (but excluding white truffles £300.

Through there, dressed in funereal shades of grey, is a restaurant called Alain Ducasse at the Dorchester, and it is enough to make even the happiest of souls run screaming for the Prozac.

Alain Ducasse is the only chef in the world to have run a trio of Michelin three-star restaurants at the same time.

I should add that I have eaten at Ducasse's signature restaurant in Paris, and it was everything it should have been: pure, precise neo-classicism, with lots of bright, luxurious flavours.

As had the halibut, the pigeon, the venison and the fillet steak at the heart of our main dishes.