The Garden Room at The Lanesborough

Written by Martin Seymour | Editor, The Mayfair Foodie | About Me

Let me set the scene for you. It is another very warm day in central London – and for those of you reading this in a grey, drizzly London, I promise we do get some warm days, and so far this summer has been a corker. However, I digress.

We arrive at Green Park station for what is billed as a short walk to The Garden Room at The Lanesborough. Now, a walk in hot weather through a busy, bustling city is never a pleasant thing, and the ten-minute stroll feels a great deal more like thirty. Eventually, though, we push through the front doors into reception at the magnificent Lanesborough and find ourselves in an oasis of tranquillity. From there we are guided through a maze of hallways and a succession of similar-looking doors until we emerge, blinking, into the Garden Room.

A small piece of advice you may wish to file away: Hyde Park Corner station is roughly a minute from the door. Learn from my mistake.

The Garden Room – The Setting

The Garden Room at The Lanesborough Hotel

The Garden Room is probably exactly what you are imagining: comfortable seating, imaginative planting and glass sliding doors on all sides, thrown wide open on a summer’s day so the whole space breathes. Think tranquil pool bar, minus the pool. It is a place to unwind after a long day of sightseeing or – heaven forbid – working.

I was here to try the new seasonal menu and to sample the ambience alongside a glass of something dry and cold. On the subject of drinks, the list runs to wines and Champagnes (Laurent-Perrier features heavily), some seriously good whiskies, and a collection of aged Cognacs and Armagnacs with a few expressions dating back to the 18th century. There is a signature cocktail selection too. And the Garden Room being the Garden Room, there is also one of the capital’s most distinguished cigar collections, overseen by Head of Cigars Yeni Momblan – one of very few female cigar sommeliers working in London.

So we took our seats, nicely cooled and thoroughly relaxed, and set about negotiating the menu.

The Menu

If the vibe on the Garden Room terrace is that of a rather upmarket pool bar, so too is the menu – though with some interesting twists and turns along the way. The dependable favourites are all present and correct: a club sandwich, a Caesar salad, a lobster brioche roll with an intriguing addition of kimchi, and a wagyu burger.

We arrived hungry (no surprise there), and as this was to be our main meal of the day we decided to indulge ourselves with a couple of dishes to start. We went fish, which felt right for a hot summer’s day: sea bass ceviche and marinated octopus. They complemented each other perfectly and were ideal for sharing.

The sea bass leaned on the flavours of Japan – always a good idea for a raw dish – marinated in yuzu and ginger and served with a miso aioli. No words were exchanged while we ate it; our attention was entirely on the plate in front of us. Very simple, and seriously good. Not to be outdone, the marinated octopus arrived with a lovely mayonnaise-like sauce made from saffron, bread and olive oil. If the sea bass took us to Japan, this put us firmly in the Mediterranean, with little potatoes adding another texture. It carried more punch than the ceviche, but together they were perfect – and both were beautifully presented.

As I said, we were hungry, so we picked up the pace with a trio of dishes: burrata served alongside heritage tomatoes, almonds and pomegranate seeds; crispy squid with romesco sauce and lime; and finally a classic grilled peppered steak sandwich with the sweetest caramelised onions.

The classic pairing of burrata and tomatoes works well – on this occasion a little too well, as I found myself fighting my guest for my share of the tomatoes shortly after he had announced that raw tomatoes were not his favourite thing. You could have fooled me. Then back to the Med with the squid, a delightful romesco and a serious hit of lime. And who does not love a steak sandwich? This was a good one: the steak medium rare and not overpowered by the pepper, the onions exactly as they should be.

A trio of dishes, Steak sandwich, crispy squid & burrata and tomatoes

And Then There Was Lemon Tart

And that, we thought, was that. Well, nearly. With you in mind, dear reader, it seemed only right that we take one for the team and order a dessert.

Here I defer to a friend who is an excellent judge of a restaurant — and an even better judge of a lemon tart. I was going to say she has had more lemon tarts than hot dinners, but she is also a wordsmith and would take great pleasure in explaining why that does not work. Let us settle on “a lot”, and agree that her verdict carries weight. The Garden Room had one on the menu. We willingly followed orders.

I am pleased to report that it was a fine example. When something is this good there is no need to overcomplicate it, and as you can see from the photograph, it arrived exactly as a slice of lemon tart should. My friend, I suspect, would approve.

Conclusion

If you find yourself in this part of town and in need of a little respite from whatever the hustle and bustle of London town can throw at you, you now know where to go. It is calm, comfortable and unhurried; the food is considered rather than showy, and the drinks list rewards anyone with an afternoon to lose. It is the sort of place you leave reluctantly and think about on the train home.

But let’s keep this one between me and you.

A Brief History of The Lanesborough

For a hotel that now trades in butlers and Champagne, The Lanesborough has a rather more sobering past. The story begins in 1719, when James Lane, the second and last Viscount Lanesborough, built himself a country mansion on open land in what was then the village of Knightsbridge. He died five years later without an heir, and the title died with him.

In 1733 a group of physicians took on the lease and turned the house into St George’s Hospital. By the 1820s the building was struggling, and the architect William Wilkins – the man behind the National Gallery – was commissioned to replace it with the neoclassical block you see today, fully operational by the 1840s. Florence Nightingale later served as the hospital’s first female governor, and had a third floor and a new wing added to improve patient care. The hospital finally decamped to Tooting in 1980, leaving one of London’s finest addresses standing empty.

A four-year restoration followed, and in 1991 the building reopened as The Lanesborough. The Oetker Collection took over in 2014, and after a two-year, top-to-toe reimagining by the late interior designer Alberto Pinto, the hotel reopened in 2015 dressed in full Regency splendour – gold-leaf ceilings, more than fifty chandeliers, and a level of detail that borders on the obsessive. There are 93 rooms and suites, round-the-clock butler service in every one of them, The Lanesborough Grill under Executive Chef Shay Cooper, the Library Bar, the Withdrawing Room and, tucked away at the back, our Garden Room.

So the next time you are sitting on that terrace with a glass of something cold, spare a thought for the patients of St George’s. I imagine the lemon tart has improved considerably.