About Alex Dilling at Hotel Café Royal
Alex Dilling at Hotel Café Royal opened in 2022 and was awarded two Michelin stars in 2024 — an unusually rapid ascension that reflects Dilling's pedigree (previously head chef at Hélène Darroze at The Connaught under its three-star rating). The kitchen is classical French at the highest technical level: sauce-driven, precision-plated, and anchored by the lost art of proper French cooking in an era when most London fine-dining kitchens have moved toward contemporary-Nordic.
The dining room seats 34 inside the Café Royal's restored 1865 building on Regent Street — high ceilings, ornate plasterwork, and a Belle Époque formality that matches the cooking's register. The tasting menu runs eight courses, the a la carte is available, and both are priced at the top of London's market.
Service is French-formal in a way that has become rare in modern London — plates arrive in unison, wine is poured at precisely the right moment, and the team's silence at the table is deliberate rather than awkward. For clients who value the classical fine-dining format at its purest, there is nothing else in the city currently operating at this level.
Best Occasion Fit
Client dinners at Alex Dilling work when the client values classical French fine dining executed without compromise. The restaurant's two-star rating, Belle Époque room, French-formal service, and Dilling's technical pedigree all point in the same direction: this is a dinner that takes itself, and by extension the relationship, seriously. The signal is unmistakable.
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