My first encounter with Alain Ducasse

Alain Ducasse at the Dorchester in a nutshell:

• Food: Great cooking in the literal sense of the word in unfashionably generous helpings. Don’t miss the chicken in Albufera sauce (a Ducasse signature dish) the innovative cheese plate or the dazzling desserts.
• Wine: A lavish and eye-wateringly expensive list
• Style/Decor: Spectacular. The walls facing the windows are studded with green silk covered buttons to reflect the trees in Hyde Park opposite. The Table Lumire in the centre, surrounded by its glittering fibre optic curtain, is admittedly a touch naff but get the sommelier to show you the gorgeous cellar.
• Service: Impossible to fault
• Who to go with: A sugar daddy, a commodity trader who’s just got his bonus (though there is a £35 set lunch)
• Who not to go with: Someone who doesn’t like dressing up
• Verdict: Three star Michelin cooking on a grand scale. Incontournable (unmissable), as the French say.

I reluctantly accepted an invitation to eat at Alain Ducasse’s new restaurant at the Dorchester last week. I don’t particularly like the trend among top chefs to build global empires and after mixed reviews I expected the food to be bland and overpriced. I also expected not to like the man himself. Judging by the photos I’d seen, he looked a pretty tough nut, more a hard-boiled businessman than a chef. Well, I’m happy to say I was wrong on both counts.

Ducasse is what London has been looking for for a while, a grand restaurant that has the potential to get three stars. Not that the intensely media-savvy Ducasse says that is what he’s after. “It is the customers who give stars. Let Michelin do what it does. I will do what I do.” he told me.

He must be doing something right for last week, regardless of his dismissal of Michelin, he picked up 3 more stars in Las Vegas and Tokyo, bringing his tally to 15, second only to Joel Rebuchon. He has 25 restaurants worldwide and seems not content with that. He’s planning to open three more - another in the Eiffel Tower in Paris, two in New York early next year.

Why go on? He surely can’t need the money. “Because of what I am going to discover the following day” he says enigmatically. It figures. He's clearly fascinated by new ingredients, a relentless perfectionsit. In the kitchen of the Dorchester he is hyperactive, barking out instructions to his staff, summoning dishes, encouraging us to taste. “Go on, go on. Eat!”

A dish of plump, sweet Scottish langoustines in a surprisingly rustic leek broth arrives tasting like a fishy cock-a-leekie. A sommelier brings a glass of Puligny Montrachet (a 2004 from Nicolas Potel) which he pronounces too cold. The dish needs more sauce, says Ducasse. Next a poached egg with crayfish and wild mushrooms is presented for his inspectation with a sauce like a super-concentrated fish soup. A bold, generous dish, spilling with flavour it passes muster. “Il faut manger! You must eat up” Ducasse exclaims, encouraging us like small children to clear our plates.

So what does he think of London? Surely we should already have more top restaurants? “Well, you won the rugby (alluding to England’s recent victory over France), you can’t have everything” says Ducasse, betraying an unexpected flash of humour. “You can’t have the greatest diversity of restaurants, the best design, the most dynamic dining scene . . . and the most Michelin-starred restaurants. But whole issue of stars is a false debate. What you want is happy clients.”

Back out in the dining room we are treated to the whole Ducasse experience. Waiters hover around us, delivering plates. Small baskets of warm gougres, tiny deep fried pumpkin ravioli. a plate of crudits cut from heirloom vegetables served with an anchovy dip and whipped cheese. The bread which includes Scottish style baps and wheatmeal rolls is exemplary. Ducasse’s team have done their homework.

My first course of scallops with vegetables and jelly, unexpectedly served at cool room temperature, works well with a creamy Josmeyer ‘H’ Pinot Auxerrois 2004 but I would probably have gone for something a little crisper, given the accompanying light, herby jelly and the wasabi dressing. A chestnut soup with foie gras and small chunks of soft sweet chestnut is sublime. We get an extra taster of poached foie gras served with mango spring rolls. The Pinot Auxerrois is better with this.

My main course, chicken with an ‘Albufera’ sauce, made from foie gras, brandy and white port is utter heaven. It goes perfectly with a superbly supple Garaudet Volnay, the Les Roncerets 2000. I wonder what it would taste like with ‘Yquem. I get a forkful of meltingly tender venison from my neighbour at the table and wish I could have had that too.

We were going to pass on cheese but are urged to try the cheese course - four different cheeses with accompanying relishes - Valencay goats cheese with sweet pepper, Montgomery cheddar with poached grapes and muscat wine jelly, a 3 year old Vieux Comt with a hazelnut and vin jaune paste and a Stilton with Mostarda di Crema. No trundling cheese trolleys for Ducasse - this must be the way forward with cheese. We could have done with another wine at this point, not that the choice would have been easy. An Amarone maybe.

A delicious Domaine de Souch Jurancon Cuvée Marie Kattalin 2004 struggles manfully with a battery of desserts - a riot of chocolate and raspberries, a ‘coco-caramel delight’ (a reinterpretation of crme caramel accompanied by a lime sorbet) and a spectacular rum baba offered with a choice of two rums to pour over it. (Ducasse clearly likes the theatre of pouring at table). There’s even a palate-cleansing post-dessert of pink grapefruit macerated (I think) in grenadine topped with another ethereally light sorbet followed by many other sweet-toothed offerings on trolleys but I’m simply too full. The clever thing about the meal is that it builds towards a crescendo, like a firework display, rather than tailing off.

It’s rare these days to feel so completely satisfied with an experience. Almost nothing disappoints with the possible exception of the sonorous spa-style music, the super-abundance of pink (the plates, the water glasses, the sommelier’s ties) and the rather silly Table Lumire in the centre which is surrounded by a shimmering white floor to ceiling curtain that designer Patrick Jouin compares to ‘walking into a cloud’. Perfect for Posh and the other WAGS*

* the term coined for footballers’ wives and girlfriends

Alain Ducasse at the Dorchester, Park Lane, London W1K 1QA
Tel: +44 (0)20 7629 8866
www.alainducasse-dorchester.com

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