David Ellis at the Ritz: trust me, this is the best restaurant in London

To whom we turn in the gloom and glory can be a lesson, a filter of our true friends. I have fallen out with the Ritz a couple of times, including once after a visit to a bar that did not warrant a review (“But you said it was very good!” They said. “Yes,” I replied. manners. We can have a stand-up line and the Ritz will always be the restaurant I choose when I want comfort or celebration. So when my friend Twiggy agrees to marry me, without any obvious signs of head injury, here is what I ordered.

It is not what you would call subtle, which is a neo-baroque room of pink and gilt. I imagine the designers obviously conjure room Louis XIV can feel at home in, although there is every chance they are just big to Strawberry Angel Delight. I guess we’ll never know. It’s cartoonishly grand, what a child can picture when he first hears about fine-dining (the truth is blander, greyer, involving other things he talked about). Thus, dining here is always an event, as luxury would expect.

Happily, they did not spunk the budget on cornicing alone. I was already in the kitchen. He had a staff of white-coated chefs with that amount and ordered that news of him flying a flag on a pole and declaring independence would not be a turn-up for the book. Do they produce confounds and dumbfounds, boggles the mind and gasts flabbers. This is the food that makes me foggy with happiness. Vertiginously toked executive chef John Williams has revolutionized his joint restaurant twenty years ago and while much of what he put in place suggests loyalty to French restaurateurs of the oldest school, sleight of hand is anything but dated. They have a bear-hugged tradition but create a sense of timelessness. Is there a sophisticated classicism?

I’ve never fully grasped what “modern England” is meant to encapsulate – it’s pub burrata, Simon Rogan sorcery, both, no? – but the Ritz may be its best advertisement. There is a devotion to the ingredients of this country, a clear acknowledgment that we still have a season (roughly), and come on, any restaurant that fills a dry tuile pipe with coronation chicken can’t be à la Française, can it? Impressively, the canapés, riding high on silver medals, were accompanied by a duck liver parfait sitting under a gingerbread mortarboard, and a sable topped with Parmesan mousse and bright basil. Is it possible to eat this much? I would most like to try it.

There is no point in commenting on perfect cooking, except to say that it is. Restaurants often say that a good meal depends on a little more than the source of the best ingredients, but then down the pub chef sidle up to me and start muttering about the budget and Scroogeish paymasters. Williams and his team should not have this; every bite seems to be an endorsement that, yes, they really have discovered the best of the best. When a waist-thick slice of lobster arrived, sitting among a grove of heirloom tomatoes, I could almost taste my last morning’s swim. Roscoff onions come sweet and close to cutlets of pink lamb as soft as it hurts the taste, rich sauce with girolle mushrooms. The red mullet comes with a crispy skin the color of earth and strands of courgette bound together like novella glass. Did human hands really do all this?