What’s the draw?
Named for the Brooklands racing course in Surrey and drawing inspiration from the United Kingdom’s rich heritage of automotive and aeronautical engineering, Brooklands is one of a kind. Hovering on the seventh floor in the Peninsula Hotel in Belgravia, on the meridian line of two of London’s most expensive postcodes, Mayfair and Knightsbridge, there’s nothing quiet about the dining room. The terrace outside overlooks Hyde Park and The Apsley House and is crowned with a stainless-steel sculpture that looks like the brainchild of Jeff Koons and Jacob Epstein.
However, it’s largely eclipsed by the work that spans one side of the ceiling to the other in the main dining room, a rendering in matte steel of a Concorde aircraft ‘chandelier’ that could have been lifted from a contemporary Ridley Scott sci-fi movie. The room is ribbed with joists of steel that compound the supersonic impression, as does the art on the far wall, an enormous floor-to-ceiling video installation made to resemble jet contrails. Two digital ticker tape signs on the wall record the temperature outside and the altitude. So, yes, it’s all a bit Top Gear, and there’s nothing subtle here, but somehow, taken together, it works.
Unlike the iconic Concorde, Brooklands had been flying under the radar since opening. That was until Michelin swooped in and awarded Claude Bosi two stars in record time, making it one of the only restos in the United Kingdom to have done so in under four months. It’s very much a team affair, as chef de cuisine Francesco Dibenedetto has been responsible for masterminding most of the dishes. This is a place where the team are very much leaning into it. The result is a tasting menu that fires on all cylinders.
The Brooklands Bar
Will Pryce
What to order?
Just like the room, the cuisine has been elevated to rarefied heights. The opening salvo, a quintey of amuse bouches, fires shots across the bow to announce that there will be no messing around here. Brooklands is all about big flavours, ones to write home about. Case in point was a coronation chicken, well, let’s call it a gelato, with chicken liver ice cream immersed in a velvety sauce that absolutely detonated with flavour. Of everything we tried, we were absolutely smitten with three dishes. Wolves Lane Farm pumpkins with aged parmesan and Voatsiperifery pepper; Dorset snail in Devil Style; and Lake District lamb with mint and pastrami. There’s even a high incidence of vinegar on the menu, including the palate cleanser, a thimbleful of chamomile kombucha fermentation. It all works, and very well indeed.
Where to drink?
You’d struggle to do better than the Brooklands Bar, with a panoramic sweep of windows that takes in Green Park, Hyde Park Corner, the Wellington Arch, Mayfair, and if you peer with some precision, Buckingham Palace. The design echoes that of Brooklands with a 1930s aviation design trope which is woven through the intricate latticed ceiling. Bartenders are, er, top-flight, serving up an array of modern classics. However, it’s not the only bar in the building. Head to Canton Blue for a beautiful boite dishing out internationally inspired serves, or to the lobby bar for a flute of champagne in an absurdly refined setting.
