Dictator dining

The Savoy Hotel is a theatre playing Mean Girls with a hotel attached to it, so you can expect it to both dream and fail. That is a polite way of saying that its new restaurant, Gallery, is not a success, but the Savoy will survive it. Though it didn’t survive the Peasants’ Revolt. It burned down, courtesy of medieval far-leftists who I would suspect were less annoying than modern far–leftists. They could hardly be more so, and I’m sure Geoffrey Chaucer, who wrote some of the Canterbury Tales on this site, would agree.

Gallery is beige at its most self-deceptive: flounces, columns, mirrors

I review Gallery because it is new, because it inhabits the vast windowless room in the middle of the hotel and I’m curious to know what works here – a Bavarian beer hall, a Wimpy Bar, another theatre? I’ve never had a perfect meal at the Savoy, but that means nothing: London exists to renew itself. That’s its nature.

The Savoy has front, and I love it for this: it treats life like an eternal opening night, which is what it should be. The entrance hall is the most gaudy and absurd in London, so probably the world: the theatre producer D’Oyly Carte, who built this hotel with the profits from The Mikado, designed a place that would make Las Vegas look understated. I visit at Christmas, so it’s worse. There is a golden champagne van outside with a tiny garden, for people who like champagne from golden vans with tiny gardens. It has a picket fence like in Oklahoma! Inside, there are gleaming floors, mad pink floristry, and – why? – a diamond necklace. Like all famous hotels, the Savoy has its own reality, even its own map. There is a signpost pointing to the American Bar, the florist and something called Scoff: that is, it’s Narnia for the very rich and, though no one could call it tasteful, it is mesmerising.