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Not so neat


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That was incredibly short lived! I'm annoyed actually because that was very near the top of my lunch list.

Oxo restaurant continues despite a great deal of negative press so perhaps Neat just didn't hit all the right notes with the product for that particular space. Too high falutin' with prices to match for such a relatively awkward place to get to.  

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I went to the restaurant for lunch once.I'd mistaklenly understood a review I'd read to mean that at lunchtime the carte was available at a lower price,but instead found a fully priced carte and an incredibly disappointing set lunch with very little choice.The place was comfortable with lovely views but the food was nothing more than ordinary,totally unmemorable and,for what it was,overpriced.I left feeling ripped off.

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i) Too much competition - last year or two saw - what - four or five places open in the fifty-quid-for-the-carte category. Neat, High Holborn, Nahm, Mju, Claridges, Hakkason possibly. All competing for what is a strictly limited market - and competing for publicity (note how each had its four-week period as restaurant-du-jour and since faded into obscurity - or bankruptcy)

ii) Limited market - for all the rampant foodism about, London simply hasn't got the broad base of eating-out culture in Paris or NY. Eating out is still an 'occasion'. The knock-on effect of this is at the haute level the base of punters for whom five courses and an amuese is /not/ a 'contact the bank manager situation' is also limited.

iii) Lack of hotel backer - virtually all the major haute success stories in the last couple of years have had a hotel providing cheap rent and perhaps even subsidising the menu (Foliage most obvious example. also viz 1837, Claridges. Not only do they soften the blow when the recession hits, they provide an incremental source of punters (ie the hotel guests), which can only help. Note the major starred closures (with exception of oak room which i'm not sure if its for fiscal reasons or not) have all been non-hotel joints (Lettonie, High Holborn, Neat)

iv) Recession. Lets face it, it can't have helped.

Would also be interested in knowing whether the closure due to braserrie, restaurant or both - most of the above comments apply to the restaurant side; traditional brasseries are more of a money-spinner.

ttfn

j

(Edited by Jon Tseng at 10:45 pm on Jan. 29, 2002)

More Cookbooks than Sense - my new Cookbook blog!
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I'm not sure I agree with your too much competition,limited market theory.This is London-there's a #### of a big market and a lot of disposable income out there.

Restaurants like Neat have massive overheads and I agree that having a hotel backer must be a great help. Ultimately though,a restaurant that gets what the French would call the "correct" price/quality equation right has more than a good chance of surviving-as many do.In my experience Neat was too expensive for what it provided and if people feel ripped off they won't come back and they'll tell others not to go.

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Steve, the restaurant was run by Richard Neat who, I believe, split his time between London and his restaurant in Cannes. Couldn't agree more about the publicity aspect. The restaurant is in a poor location for eating out, most people in that area are tourists and will probably go to the top of the Oxo tower for the view if they want to eat. When it opened it had a great review from Fay Maschler (http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/html/food/ea...top_direct.html) then disappeared into an abyss. I only wish I had got there before it closed!

"Why would we want Children? What do they know about food?"

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To me there is no doubt about this - it deserved to go under. I went there during the summer and while the food was okay it was decidedly patchy.  I remember no particulary dishes (which is an indictment at these prices), but I recollect feeling rather irritated at forking out £90/head for it.  Also the decor was off-putting (1980s hotel lounge) with really silly banquettes for our party of 5 where the waiters practically lie across the table to serve us. The service was friendly but haphazd and inefficient.  There was a nice view but it would have to have cost at least 30% less to merit a return visit.  As a Londoner I feel that familiar sense of disillusioned deja vu at paying very high prices for a so-so eating experience.   Now while I have a real to those breathless postings on bulletin boards like this about "Paris three stars" and the ilk,  a few week afterwards I went to a restaurant called Gill in Rouen.  Two thirds the price of Neat but gastronomically in a totally different league. A wonderful food experience but as Londoner it did depress me.

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Just read last years Time Out Guide. It liked the food, but thought it way too expensive and finished with these prophetic words:

"But spectacular as it is, this cooking ain't cheap, and with so many haute cuisine restaurants dumbing down their acts, Neat feels like a beautiful but endangered species"

Who says that Time Out don't know what they are talking about?

"Why would we want Children? What do they know about food?"

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Though depressing it is not hugely surprising. This is the most likely time for restaurants to go bust. Any place which found itslef in trouble towards the end of last year would have held on in the hope that the xmas rush would get them through. It would be now, in the dead calm of January-February, that serious financial problems would start to take a toll, particularly in whatever form of recession this seems to be. Personally I would expect to see a few more big names hit the wall before the end of March.

Jay

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I don't believe Neat's demise has anything to do with the location.

When Nico and MPW "handed back" their Michelin stars,regardless why they did it,they pointed out the fact that the needs and wants of London diners have changed.

People are no longer so easily impressed by being charged astronomical sums to eat prissy,overworked,overdesigned food accompanied by outrageously marked up wine.Very expensive restaurants will only survive if they are offering a very special gastronomic experience and people are becoming ever more aware of what such an experience should be. Places like Le Gavroche and La Tante Claire obviously still provide it. I never ate at L'Odeon but as I said above I felt ripped off at Neat and told several people not to go there.Everything looked as it should in that way so beloved of Michelin,but in fact the cooking was careless and the ingredients not up to standard.

Nico cut his prices and ther are places like Foliage and Embassy which are offering "top end " dining experiences at cheaper prices.For restaurants which want to charge more,just making the food look pretty on the plate is no longer going to be enough. You can now fool less and less people more and more of the time.

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I went to L'Odeon whilst Loubet was there for dinner and just for drinks on a number of occasions. The food was excellent and I liked the room although my wife was not so struck. My bet is that Marco will snap it up as I read that he wants to buy up all the restaurants and bars surrounding his Stork club which I believe is around that area (Air street off Regents Street).

If a place is bad its bad. No one want's to be overcharged to eat poorly prepared French country food, or any type of food for that matter.

Every "name" chef seems to want to do a Ducasse these days and have masses of Michelin starred places all over the globe. Obviously not everyone is Ducasse with quite the pull that his name/brand has or his head for business.

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"No one wants to be overcharged.........to eat any type of food"(how do you do those direct quotes from another post on to one's own,Andy?)

Obviously that's true but I was trying to say something else.At the very top end the difference between a great restaurant and,say,a good one lies in a level of commitment,a passion for attaining perfection,a single minded level of dedication that the customer is becoming increasingly able to discern.At Le Gavroche the passion for perfect service,for example, renders it almost to the level of an art form.People will therefore pay top prices for the extra-ordinary experience of eating there.

Nico and Marco both realised that they had no wish to continue working at the level of intensity needed to justify their prices and I,for one,respect their honesty in this regard.They could have reduced their input but gone on charging the same old prices and hoping no-one would notice because they were famous,brand name chefs.

On the basis of my one visit,Neat didn't seem to understand that a top class restaurant is more than just the sum ofa tick list of Michelin requirements.At these prices its the "je ne sais quoi" that makes the difference and justifies the prices.Neat didn't have it and therefore the prices felt like a con.

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And whither Loubet?  I followed him from Bistrot Bruno on Frith Street, where I had some extraordinary meals in its early days, to L'Odeon, where I agree the food was initially excellent.  Last I heard, he was doing something or other with Moroccan food?  But I lost track.  Anyone know?

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Wilfrid - after the Moroccan experiement at Bistro Bruno, he then went to work for Oliver Peyton, cooking Italian food at Isola. This lasted about a year, and he has now gone to Australia I believe, but what he is cooking there I don't know. Couldn't  be French surely.

Tony - just go to the post you want to quote from and click the quote icon, then edit the text down to want you want to include in your own posting. It's not a good idea to just copy the whole original post in, unless it's very short of course.

I know from reading interviews with the head chefs left behind after Marco and Nicos "handing back" of their stars, that they were not so impressed by the honesty of the move. I think they would have much preferred to have had the chance to prove their own worth. As it turned out, each has regained a star, albeit that The Oak Room is now to close, and I'm sure the chefs would have argued that they could have retained 2 stars if  they had been allowed to get on with it.

Robert Reid of the Oak Room has come out particularly poorly from all this :  http://www.caterer.com/archive/articledetail.asp?lSiteSectionID=77&lSectionID=31&articleID=40857  

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Having just returned from a brief " if it is wednesday it must be Kansas" whirlwind of a US trip, I am disappointed t see that both Neat and L'odeon have closed

I tried Neat last year after it opened and while it was horribly expensive, the cooking was very able and the service was efficient.  Both robin and I feared for its long term security though as it was an obviously "expense account" place and the trauma's of a post 11/9/01 world have made that an insecure spot to be in.  I am sure it is not location as the excrable OXO Tower still manages to part unknowing suckers from their money

As for L'odeon.  when loubet was there, it was being proffered as a big thing ( #### I even remember being offered a Lifetime membershio for a mere £5,000 - wouldn't that have been money well spent )  Since Loubet moved on to Italian and moroccan pastures new, the place has been in decline and a visit about two years ago was a huge disappointment.

The truth is that the days of the Gastrodome are thankfully over.  What we now are seeing are smaller, more nimble outfits that can attract a regular clientele without depending on the slings and arrows of the economy.  While I truly miss some of the dear departed ( a moments silence for High Holborn ) I can't help thinking this is just the next stage of London's evolution into a World class eating city

S

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  • 7 months later...

Andy -- That's too bad. I have never visited Neat in Southern France, but did visit Neat (gastronomic) in OXO twice. I remember the smoked foie gras dish -- intense (in a good way) and the views of the river at night from certain tables. Also, the purplish-burgundy single stalk of lily the restaurant sometimes used as table decoration. :sad:

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What will become of him now? I have been told by those in the know that many chefs how purport to be chef / proprietors are nothing of the sort and are bank rolled by God knows who. Whether Neat has any personal liabilities from these 2 failed ventures I don't know, but I get the feeling he will bounce back like Jean Christophe Novelli, Conrad Gallagher et al.

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