When Tom Booton was brought in to oversee The Grill at The Dorchester back in 2019 – becoming, at 26, the youngest head chef in the five-star London hotel restaurant’s history in the process – his brief was to strip away some of the formality and introduce a fresh approach to what was a rather traditional fine dining restaurant. And so, out went the immaculate white table clothes and the stiff-upper-lip service, and in came the soft serve ice cream machine.
Describing his vision as ‘fine dining without the fine’, Booton has breathed new life into The Dorchester’s Grill, creating a place that can confidently stand side-by-side with any of London’s top Michelin-starred places. And to neatly underline his accomplishment, the restaurant recently underwent a refurbishment that saw Booton become the first ever chef to have his name engraved above The Grill’s door.
The addition of Booton’s moniker has also led to an overhaul of the menu, which has ditched its set course structure and embraced the more contemporary sharing plates approach. Booton appears to have had a lot of fun injecting even more flair into his modern British menu and his dish design has an almost gleeful sense of creativity to it.
The restaurant’s smart cream and brown and deep red interior remains as it was with a striking aged, mirrored wall adding a feeling of opulence to the room. At the end you’ll find a four-seat chef’s counter behind which sit an array of copper pastry moulds and cooking paraphernalia on shelves. The overall effect is a grand dining room that suits Booton’s hearty yet refined style of cooking.
