Alex Dilling returns with an eponymous restaurant at Hotel Café Royal

Alex Dilling at Hotel Café Royal is not only his first self-titled restaurant but reunites Dilling with key members of the Greenhouse team, including chef de cuisine Pierre Minotti, who will be head chef at the new project. "Pierre and I look at Alex Dilling at Hotel Café Royal as our comeback," Dilling says. "We're picking up where we left off in 2020. We know there's a huge expectation for the restaurant and that we need to over-deliver."

Alex Dilling at Hotel Café Royal opens fully on 1 September and the preceding fortnight of soft opening has seen several of the most famous chef names on the restaurant scene book a table – "which is great, but a lot of pressure," Dilling says. Still, it's little wonder that his peers are curious to see what the new restaurant offers. The chef maintained the Greenhouse's two Michelin stars when he succeeded Arnaud Bignon in 2018 and had been widely tipped for a third: an ambition that Dilling aims to fulfil at the Hotel Café Royal.

"You're not meant to say that you want three stars," Dilling admits. "But it's been my goal since I started cooking. When I was younger, I would say ‘by the time I'm 30 I'll have three stars'. I'm 40 next year so that ship has sailed. But I need to make it happen at some point."

Alex Dilling is back in business

The omens are good. Dilling's new restaurant is owned by Victoria Sheppard, who also owns high-end coffee shop and café Queens of Mayfair. Sheppard was formerly the PR and marketing director for Marlon Abela's MARC group, the Greenhouse's owner, and has funded the new project through investments in property, stocks and shares, which means she and Dilling are in the fortunate position of having no sizeable backers to please.

Dilling's was the first and only name that Sheppard considered when she was approached by the Hotel Café Royal to open a restaurant in the first-floor space formerly occupied by French chef Laurent Tourondel's Laurent, which closed before the pandemic. "Alex is a really good friend," she says. "I used to watch him arrive at the Greenhouse at six o'clock in the morning and leave at midnight. That dedication is why I didn't approach anyone else and there is no one I'd rather invest in."

For his part, Dilling will not speak badly about his time at the Greenhouse but admits it was not always the easiest place to work. "The Greenhouse was the best thing ever to happen to me because I had the creative freedom to really understand who I was as a chef. But that company went through tough times. I could feel that it was going through a rocky period a month into starting work there. When I got the call during lockdown saying that the Greenhouse wasn't going to reopen I was sad but I wasn't shocked."

Dilling spent the time following the closure hosting pop-ups at Carousel and Tokimeitē and was in discussions with one of the most prestigious palace hotels in Paris about opening a restaurant in the French capital. London, however, is Dilling's home, even if he picked up a Californian accent when his family moved from Hammersmith to America for six years of his childhood. After gaining his professional chef's diploma from Westminster Kingsway College, Dilling worked at Le Vacherin in Chiswick. Here he developed his love of French cooking, which developed into fine dining after working first with Alain Ducasse at Adour at the St Regis hotel in New York and then Hélène Darroze, becoming executive corporate chef of Hélène Darroze at the Connaught in 2013.

"I've put everything I've done in the last 20 years together in this new restaurant," Dilling says. "I'm not some 25-year-old guy who's only worked in a couple of places. I have a foundation of working with some of the best chefs in the world and from that I think I'm able to rival any restaurant in the country."

Fresh perspective since Mayfair

A comeback this may be, but Dilling is keen to point out that the new restaurant is not a reboot of the Greenhouse. The only dish that is being repeated from the Mayfair days is Dilling's take on chowder with Dorset clams, confit potato and Sarawak pepper, which he says pays tribute both to his time in America and his application of French technique. Instead, Alex Dilling at Hotel Café Royal will offer two entirely new six-course tasting menus, one priced at £155 and another at £195 for a ‘chef's special menu' featuring the elevated likes of Kaluga caviar and Bresse pigeon.

Dilling's mission to modernise classic French cooking for a younger clientele begins with two courses of hot and cold canapés, each featuring three dishes such as smoked mackerel rillettes with parsley gelée, smoked mackerel bavarois and crispy potato. Elsewhere are five types of bread and homages to classic French dishes such as pâté de campagne, which in Dilling's hands becomes a cylinder of boudin noir wrapped in a pâté de campagne mix and sliced into a mushroom consommé. A three-course lunch menu for £65, meanwhile, will offer dishes such as blanquette de veau served for the table in a refined take on family-style dining.

"Every ingredient has to have a purpose," says Dilling, who credits his time with Ducasse for emphasising the importance of produce. "That's the foundation of what I do. I'm never going to claim that I only use English ingredients. At this price point, I have a responsibility to give guests the best product, not the most local product. I never use English chickens, because I think French ones are better. I don't think there's a problem with that."

Dilling says the experience on offer at the new restaurant will be "absolutely and unapologetically" fine dining but it will also be unmistakeably his own style of cooking. "I really try not to be inspired by anyone else's food," he says. "When a trend happens we have to throw it in the garbage and do something else. I've told Pierre that we can't do tarts as a canapé because they've become so commonplace. It's up to us to reinvent the tart. I have a huge cookbook collection but I'm more likely to be inspired by the colour of something or the shape in which it is cut than an individual dish. I'm inspired by trying to impress myself."

Detail-oriented Dilling

It comes as no surprise that Dilling has a reputation for being a perfectionist. "I'm huge on detail," he admits. "If a chef brings up a plate to the pass and it's not perfect, I'll say the word ‘detail'. That means ‘take it back'. I can see in a second if something is not completely aligned or there's one thing out of place. That's just the way I work."

At the Greenhouse, one member of kitchen staff spent half the morning shaping the carrots for an amuse bouche of mackerel escabeche topped with raw and pickled carrot while another chef spent the whole of service plating it up. And yet despite the labour-intensive technique, Dilling inspires huge loyalty from his team. "I realised a long time ago that you don't get very far with staff by losing your temper and berating them. Show people respect and they will give it back to you. At the Greenhouse, we let the team decide what time they started and I'd show up half an hour before them. Leading by example and creating a good culture gives you longevity with staff and ultimately that creates better food."

Alex Dilling at Hotel Café Royal will have 25 staff evenly split between kitchen and front of house; Dilling says he has had no difficulty filling chef roles but front of house has been more difficult. Some familiar faces from the Greenhouse have signed up: Wesley Broden is joining Dilling and Minotti in the kitchen as head pastry chef while out front will be service director Lubna Osmani. "These are all people I know and trust and who want to stick by Alex, which is really important," Sheppard says.

Bookings will only be taken between 7pm and 8.30pm to ensure that the room is full throughout service, while the front of house team has been briefed to make sure there is a fun atmosphere.

Dilling designed the new kitchen, which is all induction, with Italian company Marrone. Out front, meanwhile, Sheppard's sister, the interior designer Grace Sheppard, has covered the walls with hand-painted silk panelling. The light-filled room overlooks Regent Street and a constant stream of red London buses. "I think it's amazing that you really know what city you're in when you look out the window," Dilling says.

What's more, the small number of covers means that the new restaurant should be able to weather any recession. "I think what we're doing is quite smart," Dilling says. "I'd be nervous if we had to fill 70 seats each night at our price point, but we only have 34. There will always be a market for celebratory restaurants where people can have a special evening."

Sheppard has expanded the licence for Queens' to Saudi Arabia and wouldn't rule out opening restaurants with Dilling in another property of the Set Collection, the Hotel Café Royal's owner which has eight locations around the globe. "The world is our oyster," she says. "We'll see what unfolds but it's very much about being aligned with the very best that we can do."

Oscar Wilde, the Café Royal's most famous patron, wrote that ‘a man who can dominate a London dinner table can dominate the world.' With Alex Dilling at Hotel Café Royal, one of Britain's most talented chefs will finally fulfil that ambition.

An abundance of Caviar and Champagne

Caviar adorns many of London's most luxurious tasting menus but few chefs use it with the same enthusiasm as Alex Dilling. "When I use caviar, I use a lot of it," he says. "I'll always use between 15g-20g in a dish. I think it's strange when chefs use 2g of caviar with 80g of another ingredient. It just gets lost." Dilling's love of luxury fish eggs was developed when he worked as chef de cuisine of Caviar Russe in New York. "When you add caviar to a dish, you introduce salinity, freshness, fattiness and texture. To get all of these amazing things from one ingredient is just phenomenal."

Dilling has a long relationship with the Chinese company N25. "It doesn't sound as romantic as French caviar," Dilling admits, "but I'm not interested in giving guests local products, I want to give them the best product, and the most high-quality, consistent caviar comes from China."

Meals on the more expensive of Dilling's two tasting menus (£195) begin with a soft-boiled egg filled with slow-cooked egg yolk and Kaluga caviar, served with a smoked sturgeon sabayon and caramelised brioche filled with smoked sturgeon rillettes and more caviar. "I think it's so important in a fine-dining restaurant to give guests something they don't eat at home," Dilling explains. "Beginning a meal with caviar and a glass of Champagne is a beautiful way to start the experience."

From the menu

• Piperade and burrata, ‘bouillabaisse', smoked mackerel terrine
• Tartiflette, chanterelle mushroom pancake
• Marinated Cornish sardine, buttermilk, cuttlefish, vinaigrette ‘Perle'
• Pâté de campagne, Iberico ham, black truffle, boudin noir
• Clam chowder, Dorset clams, confit potato, Sarawak pepper
• Whole roast Scottish monkfish, Alsace bacon, red cabbage, morteau sausage
• Lake District lamb saddle, juniper, piquillo pepper, marjoram
• Sherbet, quince de provence, sauternes, creme
• Petit fours, noisette chocolate, froid fig, jelly