Food critic Jay Rayner has hit out at a restaurant for charging an eye-watering £36 for a simple salad, and an incredible £85 for a bottle of wine you can pick in your local supermarket for just £13.95.
The outspoken foodie didn't hold back after visiting the Polo Lounge on the on the rooftop of London’s Dorchester Hotel, where he paid a final bill of £370 for "a dreadful salad, terrible crab cakes, mediocre pasta, and a grossly overpriced rosé."
The pop-up Polo Lounge is in London until the end of the month, having been modelled on the original lounge, which opened in Los Angeles' iconic Beverly Hills Hotel in 1941.
Customers are subject to a minimum spend of £60 per person, which shouldn't be difficult to achieve given that the bread basket is £16, salads start at £28, a bowl of pasta is £38 and a steak is £135.
Taking to his column in The Observer, it's clear that Jay was less than impressed by all the grandeur and he called out the restaurant for it's ridiculous pricing.
"I didn’t go to the pop-up of the Polo Lounge on the rooftop of London’s Dorchester Hotel because I like watching rich people pay ludicrous prices for cack-handed food that’s a gross insult to good taste, manners and commercial decency," he wrote.
"I went because some risible hospitality operations need to be called out. Being positive is all well and good, but that shouldn’t mean absolute shockers get a free pass."
Starting with the salad, which costs more than most people's monthly phone bill, Jay wrote: "There are separate sections for chopped beetroot, skinned tomato, bacon minced to a paste, chicken breast with the texture of value-range cotton wool, cubes of sweaty, squeaky cheese, shredded egg and, on top, an avocado that’s been halfway through an egg slicer.
"Underneath is shredded romaine, including the gnarly hard bit at the centre. That displays serious commitment to gross profit, in all senses. They offer to toss it table-side. Once it’s been mixed with an over-emulsified, over-sweetened balsamic vinaigrette that looks like congealed gravy, I know where it should be tossed."
Next, he took aim at the "three diminutive crab cakes for £32" which tasted "only lightly of crab" and came with a sauce "reminiscent of school-dinner salad cream circa 1975."
And, finally, the critic slammed the pop-up Polo Lounge for its wine pricing, with the cheapest bottle coming in at £84, despite it being "a bog-standard Bardolino rosé which generally retails for around £13.95."
But, it wasn't all bad. Keen to give a fair review, Jay did give props to the restaurant for its strawberry soufflé, which he described as "a true delight."
"At the end, a perky waiter asks me how it all was and in my gruesome passive-aggressive way I say, 'Fine.' She replies, 'Amazing.' I think: 'Yeah, let’s go with that,'" he concluded.
"I have a bill for over £370 for a meal that included a dreadful salad, terrible crab cakes, mediocre pasta, and a grossly overpriced rosé. If that isn’t amazing, I really don’t know what is."
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