THIS RESTAURANT IS CLOSED Foliage

THIS RESTAURANT IS CLOSED Foliage Restaurant Review:

Foliage is everything a hotel dining room should be. Its design is contemporary without being startlingly modern, starting with the entrance which leads you past two glassed-in rooms holding over 5,000 bottles into a split-level room with views onto Hyde Park. Lighting is gentle; fabrics are luxurious; tables are well-spaced and the noise level agreeably low. Chef Chris Staines’s cooking is a delight, bringing top flavours to the fore. His menu is admirably short on description, offering a list of ingredients as in haddock ravioli/leeks/herring roe/lobster sauce or foie gras/smoked eel/apple/hazelnuts on the starters for the lunch menu and hare/sweet potato/caramelized garlic/sloe gin and langoustine/saffron/squid ink/fennel on the dinner extravaganza. It's a lesson in confidence from the chef and equal confidence from the diners. The wine list is suitably serious, the emphasis on France with more than a passing nod to the New World and priced to suit most pockets. It also has some great Bordeaux and Loire wines, and prices are as you would expect---high. Service is very good, the young staff eager to please. Set 4-course lunch £29 (£37 with two glasses of wine); Tasting Menu £55 (chosen wines are an extra £34); 4-course dinner £60; Tasting Menu £75 (chosen wines an extra £56).