The space that is now Dante Mayfair has burned through identities faster than most restaurants burn through sourdough starters. Simon Rogan did fine-dining here as Fera, then workshop-kitchen cosplay at Aulis. Daniel Humm imported New York gravitas as Davies and Brook, which lasted about as long as most New York-style impositions on London. Claridge's then ran it themselves as a dependable British brasserie that nobody really loved. Each iteration mistook the room for the product. Pride and Hudson understand that the room IS the product. The couple's CV matters here. They bought Caffe Dante in Greenwich Village in 2015 — a coffee house open since 1915 — and rebuilt it into the world's best bar by 2019. What they learned there is visible in every decision on Brook Street: make people comfortable first, dazzle them second. The entry ritual alone does the heavy lifting. You sweep through the grand Claridge's entrance, past the top-hatted doormen, hand your coat to the cloakroom, powder your nose in the vintage loos attended by ladies who polish the sinks. By the time you sit down, you've already had an experience. The kitchen just has to not ruin it. The kitchen mostly doesn't ruin it, without ever threatening to make you forget where you are. The tomato and peach salad with marinated feta and freekeh is California-fresh, nicely arranged, and tastier than it needs to be. San Daniele prosciutto with baked mozzarella is exactly what it says. Chicken alla diavola with green goddess dressing is earthy and delivered with confidence. The pappardelle al ragu is where the wheels come off slightly — pasta overcooked, sauce lacking depth — but this is not a pasta destination. Order the dover sole meunière or the veal milanese instead and you'll leave satisfied. The £11 chips are, as the restaurant itself seems to acknowledge with cheerful self-awareness, not worth £11. The smarter play is the dessert cocktail list, which is a commercial insight dressed up as hospitality. The moment after mains when customers balk at paying for pudding but will happily keep drinking — Dante has identified that gap and filled it with honey bees (tequila, coffee liqueur, amontillado, raspberry, salted honey cream) and nonna's alexanders and grasshoppers. Then there is the piece of kit that photographs your face and stamps it in edible ink on the foam of your drink, which sounds grotesque and is in fact delightful. The sticky toffee doughnut with whisky flambé, set alight tableside, completes the seduction. At £60-a-head à la carte, Dante is weirdly reasonable for this corner of Mayfair. A bowl of fazzoletti with pesto is £27, which sounds offensive until you check what Bacchanalia charges down the road. A mini martini is £10 between 3pm and 5pm. The room is quiet — this Tuesday lunchtime had a small elegant wedding in the side room and a few hotel residents eating burgers in the main room — and the service is warm, unhurried, and slick without being performative. Nobody explains the tomato salad to you. Nobody needs to. The honest critique is that Dante will not make anyone's list of London's great restaurants. It is not trying to. What it is trying to be — a civilised room inside an iconic hotel that anyone can bring anyone to, at breakfast, for a client lunch, for a quiet tête-à-tête — it achieves without apparent effort. In Mayfair, where the instinct is always to charge more and intimidate more and name-drop the chef more, that restraint is the rarest thing on offer. The Claridge's name, which the reviewer notes scares off the general public, is the only real problem. Don't let it.
