The problem with London hotels in the past wasn’t always that the food was unexciting; quite a few hotels had extremely good chefs working for them. No, the problem was that the ambience was unexciting – ancient waiters in dinner jackets, rooms that hadn’t been redecorated since the Duke of Wellington’s day and a rather starchy feel. That’s all changed today and so has the way many hotels see their food service. Dinner by Heston Blumenthal, for instance, is really a Heston Blumenthal restaurant which just happens to sit within the Mandarin Oriental hotel – rather than being the hotel’s dining room.

Read the full article at