For 5am Club people such as myself, who love to be up, caffeinated and scribbling on Post-it notes pre-dawn, the Four Seasons’ recent launch of London’s first Michelin-starred breakfast is perfect. Now we can do all that over a £70, five-course tasting menu served at a counter in a genteel, pastel-shaded dining room. If, that is, you can get a booking, in which case well done; otherwise, you could simply sit a little farther from the counter and order almost the same food off the normal breakfast menu, only without all the explanations.
Regardless, chef Yannick Alléno is clearly doing the world a favour by luring all of us early risers to one room and distracting us with lobster flatbread and a bespoke “amuse juice”, because we are clearly some of the most annoying people on Earth. Have you ever heard one of my bumptious 5.46am WhatsApp admin voice notes? Or woken, blearily, to the sound of me rearranging furniture or stomping at a walking desk? People like me are a menace. We need to be contained so the polite world can sleep. Not only that, but, from a business point of view, the idea of offering snooze-averse diners pricey, Michelin-starred chia puddings is rather genius. We can now all meet and entertain equally up-and-at-’em colleagues over salted maple pancakes and fancy french toast. After all, does fine dining strictly have to wait until lunchtime? Perhaps now that gen Z is eschewing booze and all-night raves, we’re moving into a hospitality era when the big, posh breakfast may well be the main event.
‘From a business point of view, rather genius’: Pavyllon’s exotic chia pudding.
But, being practical, who is going to staff these fancy-schmancy, forelock-tugging flash breakfast offerings? The Four Seasons seems to have that just about covered, with a small brigade in full primped attire going through the motions at 7.45am. My coat is transferred to the cloakroom and a stool is brought for my handbag. My lapsang souchong and “orchard juice” requirements are catered to, and a voluptuously glossy fresh pain au chocolat is delivered as an opening snack. The pastry is delightful, if not quite earth-shattering, and is filled with an elegant but not over-generous portion of chocolate. It comes with a tiny jar of upmarket Maison Laurino jam.
By 8am, I’m eating alongside a world-famous investor who is currently splashed all over the media. He’s having the eggs royale, which are heroically oozy and come on a very good English muffin; perfect hollandaise and prettily plated, too. As an old hand at this game, I don’t order poached eggs for breakfast anywhere, because they’re always, always cold, but not here they’re not. They also do benedict or florentine, and all come with the offer of an optional 5g caviar for an extra £25.
‘Heroically oozy’: Pavyllon’s eggs florentine.
To my right, there’s a Saudi couple with three kids eating exotic mango chia and being cooed over by staff, while at the counter chefs talk an influencer type through a chicken samosa special topped with a fried egg and a delicate peak of fried vermicelli. I’m not too sure about this dish – true, it has about it pleasant shades of Malaysian mee goreng, but it strikes me as possibly a tad heavy for so early in the morning. The coconut-based chia pudding, on the other hand, is a total delight, even if it’s essentially just fruity frogspawn.
The absolute showstopper, however, is the french toast: a sweet, custardy, structural work of art that turns up all discreet and unassuming. “I’m just a humble, beige slice of grilled brioche topped with a few toasted hazelnuts,” it says, but then, with the first forkful, it reveals itself as a sublime flavour bomb of vanilla milky-egginess with a perilously thin, crunchy outer surface. It comes with some citrus-infused whipped cream, which is a nice gesture, but unnecessary, because this toast needs no backup.
The ‘work of art’ french toast is Pavyllon’s ‘absolute showstopper’.
There’s no getting away from the fact that this breakfast is carb-based, ultra-filling and the polar opposite of setting the day up for productivity. By french toast time, I’d already quietly considered going back home to bed just to convalesce; this was not a day for building empires (tasting menu guests are also sent home with a little sweet baked gift in a bag to eat for elevenses).
Whatever the hype is around the Four Seasons breakfast, I’m not sure they invented mega-early fancy dining, either – there are equally good things happening down the road at Hide and Cédric Grolet at the Berkeley – but the posh power breakfast is definitely on the rise. My main concern is how they’ll find legions of staff who are willing to perform so brightly from 6am. It’s a specific sort of server who, at that ungodly hour, can stay in character, run a fine-dining level of service and make chitchat about ingredient provenance as if it’s dinner time at L’Enclume. Three cheers for the 5am Club! Up stupidly early, all bright-eyed, bushy-tailed and finding new ways to ruin everyone else’s happiness.
Breakfast at Pavyllon Four Seasons hotel, Hamilton Place, Park Lane, London W1, 020-7319 5200. Open all week, 6.30-10.30am (7am Sun); breakfast tasting menu Sat & Sun only. From about £40 a head; tasting menu £70 a head for five courses with tea or coffee, plus extra drinks & service