Jan Moir Are You Ready To Order

This week, the Queen cancelled her diamond anniversary party at the Ritz. Shame! HRH loves the place, but felt that such a display of extravagant royal festivity would be inappropriate against a national backdrop of economic gloom.

Maj, you must do what you think is best. However, Are You Ready To Order? has a reservation at the Ritz and is cancelling for no one, recession or no recession. Crisis, what crisis? Forget the credit crunch, says S, here comes the lobster lunch. Then he’s off down Piccadilly like a spring lamb with the scent of fresh grass in his velvet nostrils. My darling boy! To look at him, no one would think he had a truss. And double gout.

The clocks went back on Sunday and, with the clockwork precision one would expect, the Ritz launched their new Spring Menus for 2008. Yet despite this seasonal exactitude, time stands still inside the Ritz Restaurant. It has a prized reputation as one of the loveliest dining rooms in the world and, truly, it deserves the accolade. It is not just the gilt-edged Versailles opulence, the Louis XVI antiques, the dusty pastels, the hand-painted ceiling, the starched linens, gleaming Ritz crockery or the soaring windows overlooking Green Park that make it so special. It is the sense of space and implacable grandeur; the fact that no gauche modern designer has been allowed to vandalise the interior; the feeling that behind the gilded walls, an army of chefs are stuffing saddles of lamb and roasting quails just as they have done since Escoffier was in the kitchen and Edward VII was on the throne. True, this majestic effect is rather ruined by some waiters trucking around the room in ill-fitting jackets with sleeves that graze their knuckles. And the sommelier has a face that crumples like a broken accordion when we order a bottle of wine which fails to meet with his approval. Yet it is hard not to be impressed with this pink soufflé of a room and its Ritzy history.

The spring sunshine pours in from the windows as we rifle through menus that promise a blizzard of haute deliciousness. On the a la carte there is salad of asparagus with croquette of lamb sweetbreads, gribiche puree and new season almonds; five spiced duck with grapefruit confit, vol au vent printanier, cardamom and coffee jus; fillet of beef with brisket and broad bean tart, braised baby onions and horseradish sabayon; tart fine with caramelised banana, caramel mousse and rum and raisin ice cream. Yes, I tell S, whose eyes are whirling in their sockets like catherine wheels, that is just one pudding.

There is a selection of daily special Ritz classics, such as poached Bresse chicken demi-deuil on Mondays, braised breast of veal with truffled cream potatoes on Tuesday, and so on. There is also a set menu, a pudding menu and a list of Sommelier’s Recommendations amongst a sheaf of paperwork delivered to the table. From this, we order lobster, langoustines and suckling pig, a bottle of white Bordeaux (Chateau Ducla, a sauvignon/semillion made by winemaker Florence Forgas, at £38) and a glass of blanc de blancs champagne.

Downright excellence

To begin, a salad of native lobster has beautiful, crunchy tail meat, and lots of it. The sweet, juicy shellfish is served with a clear, golden jelly studded with tiny broad beans and peas. There are slivers of baby carrot add texture. Some of these vegetables, plus the asparagus on another dish, are not quite in season yet. Perhaps spring starts earlier at the Ritz than anywhere else, by royal decree. Nevertheless, it is a work of art in every way; divine to look at and to eat. Three roasted langoustines come with a matching trio of ham hock tortelloni, plus cauliflower a la Greque and haricot blanc veloute. It is quite a complicated preparation but, again, the shellfish are of stunning quality and perfectly cooked. The pasta is a little thicker than one expects with this type of dish, but all the better for it. There is good flavour contrast between the shellfish, the ham pasta, the cauliflower and the foamy veloute. It showcases top class elements of sourcing, craftsmanship and honest to goodness good cooking.

A main course of rich, tender suckling pig is carved at the table with much ceremony and generously served – you’ve got to hand it to the Ritz, they do give customers a good feed – but it is an anti-climax after the firecracker starters. One waiter carves while another sombrely holds a sauceboat over a spirit flame; his job is to keep the jus hot. Once the Carver and the Chief Gravy Warmer disappear, however, we are left with a heap of chunks of meat piled up unappetisingly on a plate - as if it was a meal being left out for a pet. The basics are good, but the Ritz staff need to sort out the presentation of this dish; it lets the side down, both back and front of house. Accompaniments include a little saucepan of baby vegetables and another containing a faultless, silken potato puree which is perfumed with garlic.

For pudding, a parfait of Calvados-infused crème fraiche on a biscuit base is dextrously put together and delicious; the caramelised apple balls and apple sorbet that come with it provide a refreshing sideline. There is enough gold leaf dolloped about the dish to please a monarch.

In short, the food is downright excellent, under the tutelage of head chef Frederick Forster, who trained with Pierre Gagnaire and Gordon Ramsay. The Ritz is back to what it does best; haute cuisine with a knowing twist in the last great dining room in London. It is expensive, of course – a Chateaubriand for two is £84 - but at least diners get what they pay for: top quality ingredients, superbly cooked by a kitchen with a proper sense of history. This is so rare in the capital that it is almost a scandal.

Certainly, it is all so different from the last time Are You Ready To Order? dined at the Ritz. Then, the food and service were little short of a disgrace. Way back in that hot summer, the grubby Restaurant terrace where we sat looked like it should have a rusting pram in one corner and a gang of hoodies lighting crack pipes in the other. Looking outside today, we note that nothing much has changed; the terrace still looks rather neglected. So the Queen need not worry about alienating any of us! Even her most lowly subjects, such as S, would feel quite at home in the murk out there.

• The Ritz Restaurant, The Ritz, Piccadilly, London W1. Tel; 020 7493 8181. A la carte lunch for two, excluding drinks but including service, £140.