NEWS ARTICLE: Style and substance in perfect harmony

(Fay Maschler, Evening Standard, 30 May 2007, www.thisislondon.co.uk)

Skylon - The Restaurant is named after the steel, aluminium and wire sculpture designed by Powell and Moya which - along with The Royal Festival Hall - was at the heart of the 1951 Festival of Britain. At the time Sir Hugh Casson, chairman of Festival Architects, described its function as simply "to astonish".

At that same time, as Stephen Bayley has noted, American poet Kenneth Rexroth, when contemplating British cooking, was moved to write: "How can they write or paint/In a country where it/Would be nicer to be/Fed intravenously." How truly astonished would both Casson and Rexroth have been to eat at Skylon.

The redesign of the restaurant - previously People's Palace - has been carried out with the same effective, light and loving touch applied to the rest of the building and the concert hall itself. Windows from floor to sixmetre-high ceiling give a view of the Thames and the north bank which isn't bettered in any other public space. Details in the furnishings and materials and the muted palette of colours employed pay tribute to an era when "modern" and " contemporary" became approval words in design and influenced domestic households from cups and saucers onwards.

A young Terence Conran worked at the Festival of Britain on the exhibition stand for British Rayon. It must be nostalgic and gratifying to him that Conran and Partners has designed the interior and graphics of Skylon (but, perhaps, now is the time to abandon menus written all in lower case).

The huge space, with its own entrance, functions as bar, grill and restaurant, the more casual catering operating on a daily basis until the unusually late hour of 1am. My meal in the restaurant was not so much a soft opening as a hard hat function. Sounds of builders banging and drilling were background music and the black Venetian blinds were being road tested to ensure that they worked in tandem. Our table was an oasis of calm and culinary diversion. Skylon's executive chef is Helena Puolakka, who has worked alongside the two Pierres - Gagnaire and Koffmann - and was most recently at Fifth Floor at Harvey Nichols. Her take on food, happily not unusual these days, is to celebrate the seasonality and integrity of ingredients. She also has her Finnish background to draw on for details of preparation such as warm-smoking fish.

(...)

Bar and Grill open daily, 11am-1am. Restaurant open daily, noon-2.30pm & 5.30-10.45pm. Restaurant weekend menu £19.51/£24.50 for two/three courses. Weekdays £29.50/£34.50 for two/three courses. Service 12.5 per cent.

For more information please contact: Emilie Lemons, Conran & Partners: cp@conranandpartners.com

May 2007