Pret a Diner brings fine dining pop-up to Hotel Café Royal for a month

“There is no other place in the world that has hosted so many icons. Rock stars, politicians, actors and writers like Oscar Wilde, Mark Twain, Virginia Woolf, Winston Churchill, Princess Diana, Brigitte Bardot, David Bowie, Muhammed Ali, Andy Warhol, The Beatles, Madonna and Tracey Emin to name just a few. The legacy of Café Royal is soaked in inspiration. We can’t wait to become a part of this history,” says KP Kofler, founger of Pret a Diner.

Amongst the elegant, intimate glamour of Café Royal, the creatives of Pret a Diner inject pomp and splendour and a visual explosion to unsettle the history-burdened walls, thus creating a break in style and an atmosphere of artistic revolution.

Hotel Café Royal’s Executive Chef, Andrew Turner team up with two New York based chefs Patti Jackson (Michelin-starred restaurant Delaware and Hudson in Brooklyn) and West Village resident Ryan Tate (formerly at Blenheim and Le Restaurant where he garnered a Michelin star within six months of opening his latter establishment). Tiziano Tasso, bar manager of The Club at Café Royal, collaborates with Dominic Jacobs (The Whip, Mayfair) to create a range of cocktails, inspired by the original Café Royal cocktail book, compiled in 1937.

The menu includes a delicious selection of appetizers ranging from Pea and Sorrel and Cheese and Truffle to Baltimore Style Crab and Pickled Ramps and Dutchy Pretzels.

The show-stopping dish is the delightful Tuna Carpaccio, Gentleman’s Relish by Andrew Turner, however you’d find the Seabass, Piquillo Pepper, Fennel and Dill – again by Andrew Turner – to be gratifying too.

Local Brit Jake Wood-Evans and Cape Town talent Ryan Hewett, join Pret a Diner in artistic revolt. Evoking faded memories and spectres of a past time, Jake Wood-Evans’ oil paintings often depict disintegrating and dissolving moments. Taking inspiration from a range of Baroque Old Masters and contemporary figurative painters; Wood-Evans creates images that are both unsettling and beautiful. Awarded a scholarship from the Royal Academy, Jake is quickly earning a reputation as one of the leading talents in British painting. Ryan Hewett has been described as one of South Africa’s most revered artists and has held numerous sell out solo exhibitions in New York, Los Angeles, Miami, London and Berlin. Hewett’s work morphs from realism to abstraction and his portraits evoke a tension between external representation and what lies beneath. Renowned for brooding evocative paintings, he explores the polarities of portraiture by embracing the ties between self and other.

The editorial unit
Photos: Filippo L’Astorina

Pret a Diner is at The Club at Café Royal, 68 Regent Street, London W1B 4DY, from 21^st April to 23^rd May 2014, Tuesday to Saturday. To book a table call 020 7406 3371 or enquire here.