The dining room at Rosi - the biggest change to the interior has been the murals on the walls.
Tell us what we need to know about Rosi.
This is the new opening at The Beaumont Mayfair, taking over the hotel's main restaurant, which used to be The Colony Grill. The chef here now is Lisa Goodwin-Allen (of the Michelin-starred Northcote in Lancashire).
Didn't she used to be at The Stafford?
Yes, there's been a bit of musical chairs in the London hotel restaurant world. Lisa's moved from St James to Mayfair and her spot at The Stafford has been taken over by Michael Caines. Here at The Beaumont, she's joined by Executive Head Chef Jozef Rogulski, who used to run the kitchen of The Game Bird at The Stafford London for eight years.
Where is it?
If you haven't been to The Beaumont before, then you'll find it on Brown Hart Gardens, just a block away from the stretch of Oxford Street where Selfridges is. The nearest tube would be Bond Street.
Where should we meet friends for a drink first?
The handy thing about Rosi is that the hotel also has a very decent bar in Le Magritte, which is a lovely place to while away some time over a cocktail. Although we will say that our martini wasn't as cold as it should have been. We're quite exacting about our martinis and this Test Drive marks the start of our new chill rating of any martinis we have. Our martini was gloriously dirty, but only a 6.5 on the chill scale.
Dirty martini from Le Magritte Bar.
What's changed?
Pretty much everything, from the art in the restaurant to the food on the plate. When it was The Colony Grill, there was a distinct transatlantic flavour to the dishes being served up. Now it's all about great British dining. They're also doing plenty of tableside theatre, too.
The London smoke and cure salmon carved at the table and served with soda bread and all the trad trimmings (£25).
Old fashioned pork pie (£19) - more of a pate en croute in terms of looks than a pie, this is normally sliced at your table, but the pie in question on the night we dined wasn't playing ball, so it had to be done in the kitchens instead. It's a very good pie, but we'd have liked to have seen some chutney in among the garnishes, which were piccalilli, little gem, and salad cream.
Steamed lamb suet pudding (£38) - we love a good suet pudding and this one didn't disappoint. But we honestly had dish envy for the following...
Chicken Kyiv with truffle butter and truffled mash potato (£46) - our waiter warned us how to cut open our Kyiv in a way to avoid a butter explosion. Do not ignore this advice!
Room for dessert?
Dessert brings with it plenty of choice. Do you go with the DIY sundae route, where you get to choose everything from the ice cream to the toppings like tipsy raisins and cookie crumbs? Or do you follow the performative route and get the seasonal steamed sponge (see below) that is flambeed at your table?
A lemon sponge given the flambe treatment
Our advice would be to pick this Mayfair Millionaire Tart. Sure, it comes with gold leaf, which is a little OTT, but we're still dreaming of the salted caramel layer. It's a must-have. (£10)
Overall thoughts:
For a while, the restaurant at The Beaumont has been one of those hidden secrets - it's a very comfortable dining room that not many people seemed to know about. The arrival of Goodwin-Allen has given it quite the lift and there was a palpable buzz on a midweek evening. It's a particularly good spot too if you want to have a business lunch or dinner and don't want the tables to be too close to each other - a fact that the businessman in the lobby we heard boasting about his back channel connections to the government might want to think about in future.
More about Rosi
Where is it? 8 Balderton St, Brown Hart Gardens, London W1K 6TF
How to book: Book online
Find out more: Visit their website or follow them on Instagram @thebeaumontldn.
Hot Dinners dined as guests of Rosi. Prices correct at time of publication.
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