Homage Restaurant

Homage, the new restaurant at the Waldorf, is exactly that. They wanted to recreate the grand café European dining experience in London, with a bar, a patisserie and grand salon. Whether theyve achieved that is debatable, but there are plenty of plus points here. Good service, a fine room its certainly grand in both the English and the French definitions sensible prices and decent volume music. In fact the only real disappointment was the food. A starter of Scottish langoustine salad, baby artichokes and asparagus was satisfactory and huge, but French Onion soup with shin of beef, gruyere crouton was just a huge disappointment. The use of shin promises a slow cooked depth of flavour, which was lacking. The crouton rapidly became a huge soggy lump of molten cheese that stuck to the spoon. And the bowl. And my chin. All without actually tasting of anything. Dover Sole was again satisfactory, but lacked excitement although thats probably true of any Dover sole. Better was Fillet of beef with a green peppercorn sauce. Served rare as requested charred outside, deep purple within it proved, again, that those boys at the Buccleuch estate know how to hang their beef. Dessert a good orange and Valrhona chocolate combination and coffee took the bill to around £90. Thats not bad but if the Waldorf name is going to be remembered in food circles for more that that salad, Homage needs to get some tweaking done asap.