The actor Richard Briers once quipped, of playing Hamlet, that “I may not have been the best Hamlet ever, but I was certainly the fastest.” Galvin at Windows, which is situated in the dizzy heights of the 28th floor of the iconic Hilton on London Park Lane (currently deep in the midst of an overdue refurbishment) may no longer be the highest restaurant in London, but it offers the enticing combination of stunning views with sublime food and one of the capital’s best wine lists. It may have lost its starry maitre’d Fred Siriex to the demands of television and celebrity a few years ago, but this exemplary restaurant is still sky-high amongst the ranks of the city’s finest spots.
I visited with my chum Boothby, a connoisseur of superb restaurants, and he rubbed his hands together with glee as soon as we walked in. Because when you’re sitting this high up and gazing over at everything from Buckingham Palace and Westminster Cathedral to Crystal Palace in the distance, it’s hard not to be overawed, even thrilled, by your settings.
Two very welcome glasses of champagne set a celebratory, even joyful, tone to the evening, and we settle in for what we anticipate is going to be an extremely fine dinner indeed. “This is what I live for, old chap”, Boothby says as we contemplate a drizzly London in all its splendour on a Tuesday evening. I pat him kindly on the shoulder, as we eat an (excellent) beetroot macaroon offered as an amuse-bouche.
That the food, courtesy of head chef Marc Hardiman (formerly of The Ritz) is sublime does not come as much of a surprise. Combining classical French cooking with seasonal English ingredients means that there is little in the way of empty flash and a great deal in terms of traditional, intelligent cooking that rivals anything in fine dining at the moment. Starters of scallops and fir potatoes and smoked eel and delicately poached egg are sublime; mains of beef fillet and delicately cooked lamb with goat’s curd are even better.
The menu changes frequently, depending on what’s in season, and although the prices are firmly in line with what you’d expect from (quite literally) a high-level Mayfair establishment, nobody could leave here and not feel that they had obtained value for money. Superbly matched wines, including a sublime Chenin Blanc and a delectable biodynamic and organic Argentine red, only enhance an almost giddily enjoyable experience.
We have dessert; we relish dessert (the Galvin specialty of tarte tatin for Boothby, ‘as good as anything I’ve ever had’, a perfect rum baba for me) and a glass of Tokaji with the latter sends me off into Proustian reveries. Service is the perfect balance between friendly and professional (the next Siriex is surely lurking somewhere within the ranks), and when you leave at the end of the evening, the warmth and kindness of the staff lingers just as long as the excellence of the food and wine does.
Galvin at Windows represents the very best of London restaurants, and even if you can go to an inferior establishment and get a view twenty feet higher, it is doubtful that you will enjoy such a deeply satisfying and perfectly considered meal as this.
Galvin at Windows, 22 Park Ln, Mayfair, London W1K 1BE. For more information, including details of ‘Friday Horizons’ and the ‘Taste of Summer’ offer, please visit www.galvinatwindows.com.
