As we limp through February towards the warmer months, one particular dining hurdle we’ve cleared is the pressure to dine romantically. Mid-February brings a yearly glut of “restaurants for romance”: places with views, places with booths, places with plastic indoor floral displays and places serving a special Valentine’s set menu with asti spumante and a helium balloon. None of these things makes my heart beat, but I’ll tell you what does: acoustic absorption. This, to me, is the sexiest phrase in the modern restaurant landscape, so when someone told me that the Dover, a New York-style Italian restaurant on Mayfair’s Dover Street, was a place one could hear and be heard, it was duly noted. Having now been, I can attest this is true: velvet curtains, wood panelling and not one but two tablecloths on each cover make every table feel like its own private island, where diners can hear their friends and, crucially, be unheard by other tables. This is gold dust. Privacy is romantic. Oh, and so is good lighting.
The Dover, a restaurant by former Soho House chief Martin Kuczmarski, has been said to be styled on Sophia Loren in the 1970s, which is another sexy phrase. Loren would look wonderful sitting in this gorgeously lit room, where each lightbulb is chosen to give your skin a radiant, just-stepped-off-a-film-set glow. The place isn’t candlelit, but it feels as if it is. It’s not often one feels sophisticated when ordering an Italian sausage pie or a hamburger, but this is one of those times.
This new Mayfair hotspot – and it is hot right now – appeared in London just before Christmas, intriguing the food scene clique by being wholly, defiantly anti-intriguing. There was no glitzy launch, no invites to influencers, no photos of VIPs in underwear sipping vesper martinis. It was almost as if Kuczmarski – after 16 years with Soho House, at the forefront of exclusivity and manufactured FOMO – had grown tired of all the baloney. Anyone with deep pockets can hurl around free sliders and create a temporary buzz. Instead, the Dover serves spaghetti and meatballs, prawn cocktails, cheesecake and other dishes that are the opposite of experimental.
The Dover did not seem to want to be found or spoken about; in fact, I challenge you to find its muted, dark, unsigned front door without walking the length and breadth of Dover Street at least twice, before eventually opening a black door and saying hopefully to someone behind the old-school handwritten reservations book: “Am I here?” Soon, you’ll be whisked into the bar, staffed by efficient, attractive Italians for a relaxing pre-dinner sleepy pony (Konik’s Tail vodka, limoncello, camomile and mint), before sipping it in the sort of elegant yet happening bar Goodfellas’ Henry Hill took Karen to when they were courting.
All this about the Dover’s stylishness and vibe now said, the food is far better than I’d envisaged. This is basic comfort food served with aplomb: starters of prime beef steak tartare, nicely seasoned and pretty to look at, with a truffle and hazelnut salad, or prawns in marie rose sauce ornately arranged to resemble Mount Vesuvius. It’s your average prawn cocktail, but an aesthetically pleasing one. I did not try the Dover’s minestrone soup, mini hotdog or smoked salmon with blinis, or the chopped salad or the penne arrabbiata, but safe to say this menu isn’t a fancy-schmancy journey of introspection from a showy chef. It’s just dinner; a satisfying dinner – we ate well and left full. The branzino fillets on the mains menu were two plentiful, nicely cooked pieces of sea bass with a very good, chunky olive and aubergine caponata and a fine, pond-green, herby sauce. I ate that with a side of mash and jus – a small pot of the butteriest pomme puree swimming in gravy. The parmigiana americanata is a sloppy treat of aubergine, pasta, arrabbiata sauce and some dreamy parmesan fondue.
This is a restaurant to keep up your sleeve for people who are sick and tired of restaurants – sick of the noise, sick of concrete walls, sick of sharing plates and of dishes arriving “as they’re cooked” – and for those who are tired of opaque menus and feel with general dismay that the golden age of dining is behind us. This is a place to dress up nice, open a door to 1970s upscale but naughty New York and eat a slice of baked cheesecake brulee safe in the knowledge that, due to top-class sound absorption, your darkest secrets are kept at your table. While 2024 may have only just begun, I don’t think that I’ll give you a better dining offer than that this year.
The Dover 33 Dover Street, London W1, 020-3327 8883. Open Tues-Sat, 5.30pm-midnight (1am Thur-Sat). About £80 a head, plus drinks and service
Grace’s Comfort Eating podcast is back for its sixth season – listen to new episodes every Tuesday here
