What hedge fund fortunes are really for

06/05/2008 

MARLON ABELA is the second richest restaurateur in London, according to the Sunday Times Rich List. The son of a Lebanese businessman who owned a series of topend hotels and restaurants in the more chi-chi areas of the South of France, such as Cannes, he is estimated to be worth £400m.

Rather than go and spend it on racing cars or yachts, though, young Marlon (and he is still pretty young, at only 30) decided to get involved in the world of food and wine.

HEDGE FUND CROWD

Especially wine — he started collecting when he was still a teenager, and the cellar at The Greenhouse, his Michelinstarred Mayfair restaurant, has the largest number of bottles of any restaurant in town. Abela also owns Mortons, the Berkeley Square private members’ club that is a favourite of the hedge fund crowd and Umu, a Japanese gaff which has also come to the attention of the people at Michelin.

So far so flash. But the million-dollar question is, what sort of restaurant does this sort of cash and know-how get you? A damned fine one, judging by a visit last week to Greenhouse. Recently redecorated, it is now an elegant little oasis filled with people in some very, very sharp tailoring.

After giving the sommelier free range to wow us with his wares, we were served several glasses of Marlon’s more unusual vino, including a wine from Japan — “the only one available in Europe”, the sommelier assured us, made by a French winemaker from a Japanese grape variety. Which leads us to the food. It is absolute class, just the right balance of classic and innovative.

For starters, we went to opposite ends of the spectrum — I opted for a special of fresh Kent asparagus with a wonderfully runny poached egg and my friend chose pan-fried duck foie gras, which came with chicory, blood orange and bergamot chutney.

PLATE OF RABBIT

For mains, my friend ate roast beef fillet with chioggia beetroot, fondant rhubarb and grated horseradish, while I went for bunny, in the form of a fantastic plate of rabbit stuffed with Swiss chard, ricotta, kidneys and Iberico ham, with a rack of rabbit on the side, and liver with Swiss chard tortellini.

These were both beautifully balanced dishes, and looked the part too — exciting without being too fussy. It was almost as if the chef was more interested in keeping the customer happy than showing off.

WHIFFIEST CHEESE

The wines which accompanied the courses were also stars, one from Lebanon and one from Corsica. Cheese followed from one of the whiffiest cheese trolleys that I have smelled in recent times. We finished off with freshblood orange with white chocolate cream and olive oil ice cream and a carré dubuffet — otherwise known as chocolate biscuit and vanilla ice cream.

TITILLATE TASTE BUDS

Very good espressos came with a selection of fluorescent petit fours which looked like they had come straight from the candy shop, consisting of little curled green sweets like caterpillars on sticks, and itsy-bitsy bombes and squares filled with various sorts of sweet, tasty goo.

As we walked back out into the damp evening, we agreed that The Greenhouse is one of those great places where you know that you are going to be looked after and to be given a feed that will titillate thetaste buds. You could argue that anybody could do this if they chucked enough money at a restaurant, but there are plenty in London which prove that doing so is not enough.

The people at Greenhouse know what they are doing and after an evening here, you can only hope that Abela’s empire expands soon, and far.

LOCATION:
THE GREENHOUSE
27A HAY'S MEWS MAYFAIR,
W1J 5NY
Tel: 020 7499 3331

By Jeremy Hazlehurst