Hotel restaurant disappoints

As a pre-Xmas lunch with B’s old BT friends, we’ve decided to take up the offer of a set lunch for £25 with a champagne cocktail at the Tiger Green restaurant in the Hilton Green Park.  The street outside is full of smart cars with personalised number plates – and indeed as we’re eating a small convoy of two Rolls, a top of the range Mercedes and a Range Rover, each with similar personalised plates, steams by. The hotel entrance is very festive so we’re in a positive frame of mind as we head through the bar to the restaurant (regular readers note: we had had a drink in the pub beforehand!).

It’s one o’clock when we arrive, and there’s only one other table occupied. There’s no-one at the desk to greet us, so we hang around for what seems an age. The nearby tables seem to be laid for breakfast, complete with a set of egg timers for some reason.  There seems to be only person serving and she is taking an order from the other table. Good humour is ebbing fast.

Eventually the five of us are seated at a table for 6, nicely positioned by a window.  We wait again for the menu and wine list. B opts for the house white, a Spanish wine called Airen. Although a little on the sweet side, it’s very acceptable, even at £21 a bottle.   There’s another long wait before they take an order, and a while again before anything arrives – though to be fair there is some nice bread.   The champagne cocktails are good, though B2 and L have opted for soft drinks instead.

The room is classic hotel restaurant – no character or charm to it at all. Very cold and unseasonal despite the decorations at the hotel entrance.

B2 and L order the carrot and coriander soup, while B and S go for the smoked salmon and I have the ham hock “compression”.  The soup (pronounced “soap” by the Eastern European waitress) arrives first, several minutes ahead of the cold dishes for some odd reason. L isn’t impressed, but it’s warming enough to cut through B2’s cold. The smoked salmon looks to be a very small portion in a huge bowl, but actually it is tightly rolled up so there’s more there than it seemed. My ham hock terrine comes with an odd celeriac mousse on top and is very dense and really rather tasty.

The Fawlty Towers service continues as we wait again for our mains. By now the place is filling up, but with people having the afternoon tea – there must be a special offer on that too.

B2 has chicken makhni which comes complete with rice, breads, papadum, chutney and raita, the dishes attractively presented on a wooden board. This too helps with his cold, but otherwise looks pretty ordinary. L and S both have the baked salmon, which seems fine, while B and I opt to pay the £4 supplement to have the chef’s signature dish (so the menu says) of venison loin with chocolate, macadamia nuts, turnip, and spinach gnocchi.  This is impressive – the venison very tender, the chocolate bitter creating a nice sauce.

For dessert L has the apple and blackberry crumble crème brulee, a somewhat weird combination. B2 has the exotic fruit salad which arrives looking more like a knickerbocker glory – but he liked it. S and B both order sticky toffee pudding with salted caramel ice cream. The waitress returns soon after to say they’d run out of sticky toffee pudding (when only one other table was dining?). B asks to have just the ice cream, and the waitress has to go to check that’s OK, returning to say it was with an air of having done us a great favour.  S opts to go for the bread and butter pudding which I had also chosen.  Now I’m a great fan of bread and butter and pudding, and I have to say - - this was the worst I’ve ever had, I couldn’t get close to finishing it. It had no texture, no flavour and a very thin cream on top.

As there were two non-drinkers and one driver we only had the two bottles of wine. So the total, with 12.5% service, climbs to nearly £200.  Much of the food has been fine, the venison in particular. But the overall experience has been less than special – maybe it’s a typical hotel restaurant – so we won’t be going there again.