Bad food is back: The Roof Garden at Pantechnicon reviewed

The Roof Garden is a pale, Nordic-style restaurant at the top of the glorious Pantechnicon in Belgravia — formerly a bazaar — opposite a Waitrose I didn’t know existed. (Waitrose seems too human for Belgravia. Food seems too human for Belgravia.) This thrilling building, which should be a library — it has Doric columns — is instead a collection of restaurants, shops and what I think are called ‘outlets’ (a Japanese café; something called, gnomically, ‘Kiosk’), all celebrating the ‘playful’ intersection — I mean meeting, but marketing jargon is addictive if you are an idiot — between Nordic and Japanese food.

It is a wealth mall from hell, then, in the style of Terminal 5’s main street. I had hoped pandemic would suppress such places — they sell snobbery, not food and they take up floor space that could go to better restaurants — but they are the Japanese knotweed of cities of wealth enablers. They always spring back to signal the health (I joke) of the nation.

You take a lift — or pale, smooth stairs — to the roof, on which there is bright pale restaurant and a terrace overlooking Belgravia’s chimneys. This room (they would call it a space because their souls have been ripped out by contemporary design magazines) would be fine — it is a glorious shell — if the aesthetic hadn’t collapsed into cashmere neutrals dash Valium dash divorce. I haven’t seen so much beige since I last stared at a Butterscotch Angel Delight and thought: I wish you were blue.

The terrace is designed by a Finnish horticulturalist — for this, I thank her — and the interior looks like a house-plant convention. It is a gathering place for the native rich: there are babies, there are dogs, each with their own cashmere neutrals and consultant stylist.