The Dining Room review: a royal feast at The Goring hotel in London

Whatever the occasion means to you personally, the coronation of a new monarch will always be hard to ignore. And even if it’s a relatively modest event compared to its predecessor in 1953, that’s unlikely to dampen the spirits of British institutions across the land revelling in royal fever.

One such institution, The Goring, the historic hotel in London’s Belgravia, has a special relationship with the royals. Does that put it under a different kind of pressure? Find out how its Michelin-starred restaurant, The Dining Room, excels with an exquisite tasting menu deserving of royal approval.

The hotel

The Goring is as close to Buckingham Palace as possible without being inside its grounds. At dawn, guests could feasibly hear the yelp of a corgi. It was also Kate Middleton’s home for the days before she married into the family and a favourite for the Queen Mother.

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So why are the royals so attached to The Goring, other than for its convenient location? It is the only hotel to be granted a Royal Warrant for hospitality services and since 1910 every reigning monarch has walked through its doors. Another reason is maybe because it’s another enduring family institution, in the same hands now as it was in 1910 when it was built. Or perhaps they relate to the hotel’s refined sense of individuality. Whatever the reason, you can imagine the lengths the hotel goes to in order to retain its clients.

The restaurant

Fine dining isn’t to everyone’s taste. For me it’s always a question about satisfaction, and the quickest route to satisfying any diner is serving them delicious food. In some fine dining spots, that can feel subservient to ideas that take you on a much more complicated route.

Thankfully, The Dining Room is not one of those spots. Yes, it’s formal and a bit fussy. The clue is in the name, and if that makes you picture starched tablecloths, bow-tied staff and expensively upholstered seating, then you’d be spot on. But this is the real deal. It knows exactly what it represents and, crucially, it’s not at the expense of what really matters.

The coronation tasting menu

The Dining Room’s plates carry the silhouette of the hotel’s founder, Otto Goring, and it’s what goes on those plates that has earned it a Michelin star. The six-course coronation tasting menu doesn’t just pay lip service to the occasion: it displays the best of foraged Welsh ingredients with care and expertise, one of many reasons it would please the former Prince of Wales.

The coddled Clarence Court egg, fine herb garden salad and truffle vinaigrette is a far less humble reincarnation of a dish the king is known to be fond of, but the flavours and aromas were otherworldly. A copper-coloured confit egg yolk with truffle had all the right earthy richness, but those carefully tweezed herbs lifted the dish to a place of botanical bliss.

I’m more used to seeing something like a vol-au-vent on a menu when it’s heavily seasoned with irony, but here it was earnest. It came with buttered morel and wild mushroom and wild garlic hollandaise, a collection of ingredients that couldn’t fail to be delicious. But that didn’t prepare me for its marvellous depth of flavour, which can only be achieved with many hours of painstaking process. It cued audible groans of enjoyment from both sides of the table.

Those groans were far from over. The fish course was cured salmon with fennel, glazed langoustine, and pickled spring vegetables, arranged on the plate with the flair and precision only Michelin-rated venues can. Again, the preparation – especially of that blushing salmon – retained all of the fish’s wild texture and flavour. It was a privilege to eat.

The immaculate staff let me trade the meat course for a wild garlic risotto with comté, pickled walnuts and more morels, which I couldn’t take my eyes off when I browsed the à la carte menu. If only all risottos were like this: vividly coloured, flowing in consistency and overflowing with fresh springtime flavours.

Dessert was a tribute to a jewel of the British pudding tradition: rhubarb, which was paired with timut pepper mousse and a raspberry sorbet. It may have sounded grown up on the menu, but the jammy flavours were pure fun. Close your eyes and it could easily be the taste of a slightly naughty treat found at a summer street party.

The verdict

The coronation will encourage countless menu redesigns at restaurants across the country, but few will feel as personally motivated as The Dining Room’s. After all, it’s not impossible a Windsor might drop in for supper unannounced one evening, as neighbours sometimes do. But while it’s novel and interesting to eat somewhere with a relevant history, more important is how the food tastes. At least in that regard, The Dining Room will deliver pure satisfaction.

Dominic Kocur was a guest of The Dining Room. The coronation tasting menu costs £150 per person and includes canapés, petit fours and champagne. It will be served at lunch on Friday 5 May, Sunday 7 May and Monday 8 May. And at dinner from 5-8 May. The Goring, 15 Beeston Place, London, SW1W 0JW; thegoring.com