The Cédric Grolet at the Berkeley lives in the shiniest hotel in Knightsbridge, though I prefer the Mandarin Oriental, because it looks like the crown of a toppling king: no matter what they spend on it, it seems in danger of falling into Hyde Park. The Berkeley operates a pass the parcel for restaurants and, for now, Cédric Grolet (the World’s Best Pastry Chef 2017) has it.
The cakes sit under glass domes like sculptures: a fake mango, a fake apple, a fake fried egg
The Berkeley has a fondness for mad teas, which is, by itself, a cognitive dissonance, as I haven’t seen a fat person in Knightsbridge since the 1990s: perhaps they are all dead. I have eaten a shoe biscuit here during London Fashion Week because some women like to eat shoes and there is nothing wrong with that.
This is, at least partly, a ludicrous bakery, as well as a fable that tells us that no mandarin is as good as a real mandarin, and the act of trying to make a fake mandarin when a real one is better is something pitiable.
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