Michael Caines at The Stafford

This restaurant, on the ground floor of the Stafford Hotel, opened in September 2025. The head chef is Simon Ulph, who previously worked at Caine’s Lympstone Manor. However, running the kitchen today was James Willis, who had previously worked at Pergola and more recently at various restaurants in Asia. There was a tasting menu at £165, which is what we opted for, as well as a full a la carte menu and a number of hotel special dishes, such as Dover sole and beef Wellington. A la carte starters ranged from £26-£38, main courses £46-£55 and dessert £20, with the cheese trolley at £29. Tea or coffee with petit fours was £10. 

The wine list had 469 labels and ranged in price from £37 to £2,975, with a median price of £145 and an average markup to retail price of 3.2 times, which these days is scarcely excessive for central London. Sample references were Hetszolo Dry Furmint Dry 2021 at £51 for a bottle that you can find in the high street for £14, Domaine de la Zouina Chardonnay Epicuria 2021 at £63 compared to its retail price of £18, and Brolio Riserva Barone Ricasoli Chianti Classico DOCG 2021 at £85 for a wine that will set you back £31 in the high street. For those with the means there was Vega Sicilia Alion 2019 at £255 compared to its retail price of £79, and Cayuse Vineyards Syrah Cailloux 2019 in Walla Walla Valley at £355 for a wine whose current market value is £127.

The meal began with a pair of canapes. Truffle gougeres were served warm, with an egg yolk, pickled onion and cheddar cheese. This was pleasant enough, the choux pastry having a good texture, but there seemed to me to be too many competing flavours here. A simple cheese gougere may well have been a better bet. Chicken liver parfait tartlet with blood orange was better, with very delicate pastry, while the acidity of the blood orange nicely balanced the richness of the liver parfait (15/20 canapes on average). Bread was a Porterhouse roll loaf, made from scratch in the kitchen. This was genuinely good, served piping hot and having excellent texture, as well as just the right amount of salt. 

Orkney scallop ceviche came with oscietra caviar (from Kings Caviar), honey, grapefruit and soy with an avocado and lime vinaigrette. This was a pretty dish and the scallop had good natural sweetness. However, while the citrus was in principle a good idea to provide balance, in practice, the citrus was just a bit too sharp (14/20). Better was confit duck liver terrine, served with pickled apple, spiced apple puree and candied walnuts. The terrine itself had a slightly rustic texture but good flavour, but here the spiced apples provided the right amount of acidity to balance the richness, while the candied walnuts provided a pleasing addition texture (15/20).

Pan Roasted Brixham Turbot (from a roughly 4kg fish) was served as a small fillet resting on a base of shellfish chowder, oscietra caviar, oyster, and a sauce made using Lympstone Manor Cuvee. The turbot was cooked nicely, while the sauce with it had good flavour, the caviar adding some salinity that went well with the fish (15/20).

Roast pigeon from France was served with baby leek, girolles, celeriac and truffle puree, and a pool of Madeira sauce. The pigeon had very good flavour and was carefully cooked pink, the girolles were good and the sauce had pleasing depth of flavour. The only tiny quibble was that the celeriac was a touch firm, but this was a very good dish (16/20).

Stoke Marsh Farm Hereford Beef appeared as the final savoury course. This was accompanied by braised beef cheek, cep, watercress purée, red wine sauce and celeriac puree. This was a lovely dish, the beef having excellent flavour, the late season cep also excellent, while the celeriac puree brought an earthy balance. The red wine sauce again was well made, having lots of flavour depth, and the watercress brought some welcome balance. This was a well-designed and very well executed dish (17/20).

Cheeses on the trolley were all British. There was a selection of Golden Cross goat milk cheese from a village called Golden Cross near Lewes, the unpasteurized ewe’s milk cheese Wigmore from Village Maid Cheese in Berkshire, Yarlington from King Stone Dairy in Gloucestershire, Cornish Kern from Lynher Dairies near Truro, Pitchfork Cheddar from Trethowan Brothers Dairy in Somerset, and Northern Blue from Shepherds Purse Cheeses in Yorkshire. These came with good grapes and crackers, though a veil was best drawn over the distinctly stale celery. The cheeses were all in nice condition.

Green apple sorbet with vanilla foam was the pre-dessert. This was pleasant enough, and the (French) apple certainly brought some freshness, but for me, there was a lot of foam relative to the apple, so you really had to dig down into the serving glass to find it. Once excavated, the sorbet itself was good (14/20).

The main dessert was chocolate and orange. The chocolate mousse came with an orange compote, with a dark chocolate tuile and an orange sorbet. The mousse had good texture and the orange sorbet balanced it well (15/20). I wonder whether it might have been even better with dark chocolate. Coffee was just Nespresso capsules, which to me is simply not on given that coffee and petit fours were priced at £10. There is no excuse for a serious restaurant in London, a city full of specialty roasters, to be serving coffee of the quality of Nespresso, especially at this price.

Service was very good indeed, the staff being attentive, friendly and helpful. The bill came to £228 per person all in. If you went a la carte and shared a modest bottle of wine, then the bill per person might be more like £160. This was a very enjoyable overall experience, with a pleasingly calm dining room with well-spaced tables allowing easy conversation. The staff were excellent and the cooking was of a high standard. There are tweaks that could be made, as is true of almost every restaurant, but this is somewhere to which I would be very happy to return.