DRINKING & DINING

Arnaud Stevens

BEST FOR: BUSINESS

Restaurant
Sixty One
T

here are rave reviews of Sixty One online. They

must have eaten only the bread a trendy
wooden box of sourdough, baguettes from
Boulangerie de Paris and homemade Marmite sourdough
it transports one to a carbohydrate-based rapture, a
warm, yeasty heaven: if heaven were a bakery lock-in.
The canary taxi carries pale, unpasteurised, gloriously
fatty butter that thaws on the crusty floor.

B E L G R AV I A R E S I D E N T S J O U R N A L

Perhaps they invested their hopes in the chefs

history. Arnaud Stevens has certainly worked with the
greats Pierre Koffmann, Marco Pierre White and
Richard Corrigan, to name a few. Searcys certainly
wouldnt back just any old horse. And who doesnt
love the firms Royal Opera House offering or the
Gherkins private dining room? Backing him up is Artan
Mesekrani, previously Gordon Ramsay at Claridges, and
a host of names that scream foodie establishment. So the
show has all the right people what could go wrong?
Well, the location for a start. It may market itself as
south Marylebone, and Marylebone as any halfwit will
tell you, is really up and coming code for a future that
involves juggling both mediocrity and exorbitance. The
reality is that its just round the corner from that most
depressing of underground stations, Marble Arch, on a
street remarkable only for its lack of landmarks.
The imagination of the site has clearly rubbed
off on the name (its door number on Upper Berkeley
Street), not to mention the interior, where Tonik Designs
has created a place that might charitably be described
as simple and modern; think
brass, cream, oak and light. More
honestly, think of All Bar One
on steroids. It may have been
carved from an oversized bronze
medal. Its... its as if the noughties
never happened.
Its the perfect environment
for a businessman its not crazy
or expensive; instead, its safe
and comfortably pricey and
its attached to the backend of a
hotel, hence the ubiquity of the
tieless wonders. Of course, they are
legion even the culinary tagline
British cuisine with French touches
screams living on the edge (of a
butter knife atop a sofa).
Annoyingly, this safe attitude
is often absent from the food. A
quenelle of white chocolate ganache
finds itself rounded upon by pork,
mussels and a rich polaine-based
soup, appearing to follow a logic similar to that of
drowning a sausage in custard, because caramelised
onions often taste great with meat. The beef cheek served
with black pudding and pancetta is too rich. The Swiss
chard gratins attempt to get some elbow-room on the
palate is as effective as attempting to club a bull with a
stick of celery.
The result reminds me of Churchills quip about
Stafford Cripps: He has all the virtues I dislike and none
of the vices I admire. Its an anaemic offering a
desperately thin, ghost-like approximation of what it
was obviously aiming for. This pitches it perfectly at men
of business, however, men who dont want the real thing,
the men who thrive in the simulacrum.
61 Upper Berkeley Street, London W1H 7PP,
020 7958 3222 (sixtyonerestaurant.co.uk)

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