Wine List of the Week: Rosi at The Beaumont Mayfair
While Douglas Blyde does discover a wine list full of “depth and balance” at The Beaumont’s Rosi in Mayfair, he urges the team to dare to push the boat with their pairings, and step beyond the canon of classic towards wines which spotlight the hotel’s location at the “crossroads of the world of wine”.
Rosi is the latest turn in the tale of The Beaumont – “this divinely art deco enclave [which] has enough buzz between its art-laden walls to more than make up for its discreet exterior,” as The Times put it. Built in 1926 as a car park for Selfridge’s, the building was too handsome for its own good: a white-stone temple to motoring, its Egyptian columns sheltering improbable glamour. Corbin & King saw its potential, transforming the garage into a grand hotel. Now, under the sharp stewardship of former Stafford hotel supremo, Stuart Procter, it is ready for its next act.
Gone is the Modigliani Portrait of a Young Girl from a dining room now dressed with murals by Luke Edward Hall, a memoir of the dining adventures of owners, philanthropist Wafic Saïd and his wife, Rosemary. Rosi, a contraction – replaces the Colony Grill Room with a Modern British menu by culinary director, Lisa Goodwin-Allen. Lancashire-born, she cut her teeth at Le Champignon Sauvage before two decades at Northcote, where she became head chef at 23 and kept the star shining. “Rosi is a restaurant where the menu is full of dishes you really want to eat,” she says.
Drinks
Formerly of Bernardi’s, then Locanda Locatelli, Venetian-born head sommelier, Giorgio Mulato curates a list of depth and balance – anchored in France, expressive of Italy, and punctuated by a considered English accent befitting a London restaurant led by a British chef. Burgundy and Bordeaux provide the frame, from 2012 Bâtard-Montrachet Grand Cru, Domaine Marc Colin (£1,180), to your author’s birth year 1980 Pétrus (£3,100), and a trio of d’Yquem reaching to 1997, bolstered by the USA in shoulder pads – 2019 Kongsgaard Cabernet (£490). Yet there is generosity of spirit here: 2023 Grüner Veltliner Terrassen, Bründlmayer (£65), and 2023 Colomé Torrontés (£45) show Mulato’s affection for bright, pure, table-ready wines as much as cellar treasures. From his own home region, 2019 Amarone della Valpolicella, Marion (£165), a wine of Venetian origin and gravity chosen for its balance between richness and grace, shows pride.
English still and sparkling wines hold their own: Hundred Hills from Oxfordshire, Gusbourne from Kent, and Yotes Court bring the conversation close to Mayfair, while Lyme Bay Martin’s Lane Chardonnay (£86) and Pinot Noir (£97) demonstrate the new confidence of English terroir in still form. It is an elegant act of cultural diplomacy – the Venetian sommelier championing English vines with continental poise.
That sensibility extends beyond the dining room. The heated cigar terrace overlooks Brown Hart Gardens, whose Baroque pavilion – long rumoured to have stabled Queen Victoria’s pet elephant – was in truth built as an electricity substation. Amid cedar and Havana smoke, at Le Magritte Bar & Terrace, beyond a bespoke freestanding humidor, Giovanni Dellaglio serves barrel-aged Negronis using gin sweetened with honey from the hotel’s own hives. “Like a tailored suit,” says Sicilian beverage manager, Antonino Lo Iacono, an alumnus of Duke’s Bar, “this drink will always be fashionable.”
The bar’s centrepiece, an edition of Le Maître d’École, pays tribute to Magritte’s bowler-hatted figure. Lo Iacono recounts the day he accidentally “exploded” an espresso martini across the replica, before restoring it with hand sanitiser. The episode captures The Beaumont’s spirit.
Dishes
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We lunched with Brian Clivaz, custodian of L’Escargot, Greek Street – London’s oldest French restaurant (100 in 2027). His optimistic motto, declared over lunch, was: “Now are the good times.” Dishes are realised by executive chef Brendan Fyldes, sprightly in light-blue frames, and executive head chef, Jozef Rogulski, formerly of The Game Bird at The Stafford.
Though Mulato’s presence had been assured in writing, wine selections were left to assistant head sommelier, Luca Mighali, also ex-Locatelli, hailing from Puglia. Lunch opened with the impressively extensively distributed Billecart-Salmon, served in a Riedel Superleggero, followed by pristine crudités presented upright in a bowl resembling survivors waving from a lifeboat, and dinky chipolatas, which Clivaz considered for a literal doggy bag for his two canine friends, with beer mustard which could do with more punch. Each snack at £12 plus 15% service is either a statement of confidence, or a reflection on what grand-liner hotels must charge simply to survive the zeitgeist. By contrast, L’Escargot offers a three-course menu for £25, Baba au Rhum included.
We sidestepped caviar (from £40 for 10g) and oysters (£50 for 12) for starters of generously fleshy seafood cocktail and tableside steak tartare. The latter might have benefited from thicker chopping and a question about spicing, though shaved horseradish was a neat touch. With it, Mighali chose 2019 Chanson Monthélie Premier Cru Le Clos Gauthey, a wine showing fatigue, perhaps from being open too long. and served a few degrees warm. At this point Fyldes appeared to check on proceedings, perhaps ensuring redemption through the thankfully delightful main course: pan-roasted halibut pepped with grape, cucumber, and tarragon, accompanied by London’s crispiest triple-cooked chips. Paired with the underpowered Saint-Véran En Terre Noire 2023 Deux Roches, the honest peasant in Sunday best was slightly ridiculed by the designation of “Grand Vin”. All the while, piano drifted in from the tea court.
Finally, a towering sponge, flamed tableside with an unknown fuel, arrived with whipped cream and Ben Ryé 2022 Passito di Pantelleria Zibibbo from Donnafugata – another wine we so often see, if lacking the acidity to refresh the dish. Notable mention, too, to the trifle, its seasonal plums cooked perfectly.
Last Sip
If Antony Gormley’s ROOM – the semi-abstract sculpture forming one of The Beaumont’s most famous suites – is a chamber of deliberate solitude, said to be unbearable for some guests, then Rosi is its opposite: the hotel’s pulse made audible, where light, laughter, and appetite gather. Yet we would urge the sommelier team to be considerably more daring in their pairings – stepping beyond the canon of cannily bought classics towards wines which genuinely speak of the team’s roots and the hotel’s location at the crossroads of the world of wine, especially when they are given written notification of the need to take care. Keep an eye open for “Pearl”, set to replace an ice cream parlour over on the raised gardens.
Best for:
- Champagne, Nebbiolo, Napa
- Classy cocktails and Cuban cigars
- Theatre-led dishes
Value: 93, Size: 95, Range: 95, Originality: 94, Experience: 93; Total: 94
Rosi at The Beaumont Mayfair, Brown Hart Gardens, London, W1K 6TF; 020 7499 1001;
info@thebeaumont.com; thebeaumont.com/dining/rosi
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