The Winter Garden

With the exception of hotels that serve buffet breakfasts, in London we mostly know buffets to be stodgy and appealingly dirt cheap, like the many Chinese all-you-can-eats dotted around town. High-end buffet restaurants are much harder to come by.

Brunch at the five star Landmark Hotel on Marylebone Road is one such offering, however it seems to be fully booked forever, so as chance would have it we end up going for breakfast instead. It’s served in the Winter Garden, an atrium with palm trees and other exotic greenery.

We’re expecting an opulent feast, but the food on display is mediocre at best. Salmon confit is bland cooked fish, and the tortilla on sticks with peppers and onions is tasteless. Cured meats like Parma ham, pastrami and cold beef look like they’ve been left out of their packets for too long; a large bowl of hummus has even started to develop a crust round the sides. Quite aside from the fact that breakfast began two hours ago and food is already spoiling, one would expect a hotel of this calibre to replenish their buffet with fresh dishes.

Perhaps the à la carte cooked breakfast will fare better, but alas the duck confit hash potato is merely ok, as we’d hoped for a little more than oily deep-fried mashed potato. The salmon kedgeree has plenty of spice but is in dire need of salt; in fact the dish gets me thinking of the other, delicious kedgerees I’ve had recently. This is not a good thing.

In addition there is a counter where a chef prepares eggs and crêpes to order. A mushroom omelette is the best thing we eat, prompting the boyfriend to claim “if I had to eat here again I’d just have six of these”.

For a cheap caff this would still be an average meal, but this is a luxury hotel. And that’s not all – we initially wait ages to be seated despite several tables being empty, and have to ask someone to bring over menus. Luxury buffet? I’d rather eat at Mr. Wu.