Brown's Hotel

Everyone knows Brown's Hotel, just off Piccadilly in Albemarle Street, opposite The Ritz. More English, certainly more discreet than The Ritz, isn't Brown's the place to go and re-enact the traditional ceremonies of the English afternoon tea? These are the accepted clichés at any rate. Where full blown dining is concerned, confusion may set in on account of the small chain of restaurants called Browns, which started in Oxford and has a reputation for old fashioned English food. Hence presumably, the decision of Brown's Hotel to rename its restaurant 1837, that annus mirabilis in which Queen Victoria came to the throne. 

No less portentous for gastronomes, it was also the year in which London's first public restaurant opened in Mayfair, at Mr Brown's eponymous hotel. The restaurant 1837 was recently refurbished retaining its reassuringly Edwardian wood panelling and carved pillars. The ceiling is quietly decorated with Jacobean style plasterwork. Together with the heavy drapes, the effect is that of a comfortable country house dining room rather than a glitzy metropolitan restaurant.