The Winter Garden

The Winter Garden restaurant in The Landmark Hotel is located at the centre of the hotel. The architecture with a glass roof and palm trees creates a holiday atmosphere, even on a rainy day. Live music and impressive food make this place even more enjoyable.
Since I went to a Decanter wine tasting event at The Landmark Hotel in Marylebone, I had the plan to visit their The Winter Garden restaurant. I am walking past the hotel about once a week, and one Saturday afternoon I finally decided to go there for a late lunch.
It was gently raining outside, and the light-​filled atrium at The Landmark Hotel was nice and warm with palm tress spreading a mediterranean atmosphere. The Winter Garden is such a stunningly beautiful place that I could hardly believe that I was totally unaware of it until just recently.
As if the building itself was not already amazing enough, the live music made it even better. They played kind of light, enjoyable music, mostly dominated by the piano, but I also think there were one or two strings present on some works — I couldn’t actually see them playing for most of the time.
Beyond classical pieces, they also played some more modern songs including music from The Beatles — fittingly I thought, not too far from Abbey Road Studios. I was a bit sad when the musicians took a little break.
First thing after being seated, I went through the wine list. The selection by the glass is okay, but somewhat limited. I went for a Sancerre white wine from France and thought it was a bit too flowery or fruity for my liking. But then, it was still a pretty decent wine.
The complimentary bread was absolutely delicious. While I am not the biggest fan of olive bread, this was warm and tasted great with soft, flavourful butter and crushed salt. A glorious start that could hardly have been any better.
I wanted something light for lunch and after going through the complete menu, I ordered a risotto with butternut suqash. Now, I am no expert in risottos, but this dish was delightful. The flavours were bold, the rice had a bit of a bite to it and various seeds tasted distinctly different and added a nice little crunch to the plate. There was some spinach and I think even fennel. The roasted butternut squash also tasted great. The dish played with colours and textures. It was rich, yet not too heavy — simply a triumph of a plate.
Of course, I could not resist and ended my lunch with a dessert. I chose a combination of white chocolate cream with blood orange sorbet. It looked beautiful, tasted great and was not too sweet. The passion fruit sorbet was a very nice palate cleanser.
Throughout my lunch, the service was very good. Just at the end they were a little bit slow to bring the bill. But then, I was not in a hurry and enjoyed sitting around a little bit longer, listening to live music and enjoying the atmosphere. Despite The Winter Garden is part of The Landmark Hotel, it feels calm and relaxed and not busy, like hotels sometimes can be. For me, the light atrium and palm trees created an illusion of holiday.
In summary, I cannot recommend The Winter Garden restaurant highly enough. This really is a place to enjoy, and I imagine, it would also be an impressive location for a date. However, you should not wait for a special occassion, just go there whenever you want to take a mini break with palm trees.

Infinity Brunch Club Outing #6: Landmark Hotel.
What better way to spend your 39^th/“40^th” (thanks Vanessa) birthday, but with an outing with the Infinity Brunch Club. Since it was my birthday, I opted to go all out and do it in style at The Landmark Hotel/​Winter Garden. It’s unclear if it’s actually part of the Winter Garden as it’s on the balcony above, but it’s listed on the website for the restaurant, so I’ll just go with it.
Unfortunately, our train was super late, so we arrived about 20 minutes late. The brunch is served from 12:30 — 3:00. With unlimited food and champagne for that two and a half hours. Since we were late, people had already had quite a few by the time we arrived, so the fun had already started. Once we arrived, people quickly got up to get some food and check out the extravagant displays.
There are basically four «sections» to the buffet. The first one has salads, sushi, fish and soups. I started here. I opted for the small build your own Caesar, some asparagus salad, some sushi, beetroot salad, a tomato and mozzarella tart and some of the house-​cured salmon. Everything was freaking amazing. I was impressed as usually buffets are sub-​par, but this one went all out. For the next round, I went to the breakfast area. There were lots of options here, with your usual fry-​up options with a few surprises. Plus an omelette station where they make your omelette for you. And possibly you can learn a lot about the person making it for you. I highly recommend the cinnamon french toast as it was amazing. Although all the breakfast food was amazing, so there really were no complaints here.
Next stop? It was for some roast. There were three types of roast available: beef, ham and chicken. However, as I was getting full, I just had the beef. But everything looked great. The roast was the most disappointing part as it just wasn’t to the same level as everything else. It was really good, just not quite as good as everything else.
Of course the last section is for dessert. And they make a huge spread. There’s a chocolate fountain (and don’t think I didn’t want to go all Vicar of Dibley on that!), and a huge table of different things. Of course, not everything will be to your taste, but the small bites for dessert were fantastic. My partner filled a soup bowl with chocolate from the fountain and brought the fruit and things back. Then others at the table started eating it with a spoon. So high marks for the fountain. The salted caramel chocolates, the macarons and the nut dessert were my favorites from the trolley.
And during all of this they keep pouring you champagne. And a lot of it! And they have a piano and guitar player to play pop songs in the form of muzak for your entertainment. So you get to get drunk and start singing ridiculous songs. But don’t do that. Unless you’re us. Then at the end, they played happy birthday and my table sang for me. Then they brought me a cupcake (which was delicious but I was so full by then) and a candle to blow out.
They go all out for this brunch, which you should expect for the price, and I was extremely happy that I went. I’d definitely go back, but I think it’s a once a year/​special occasion sort of thing. But if you want to splash out and give it a try, I highly recommend it. You do have to book quite far in advance though, so just be prepared for that. It’s definitely the best (and most expensive) infinity brunch I’ve been to in London so far!

Lovely atrium in this iconic 5 star hotel. Was here for a weekday breakfast. It is about 30pp and it has all the classic 5 star breakfast– continental breakfast buffet, fresh juices. And hot breakfast dish of your choice. Think it is very very reasonably priced for what you get.
I tried crab cake breakfast for my choice — not sure if it is a great breakfast dish but crab cake was extremely high quality. :-)
Great space — great way to start your day in a nice, relaxing setting.

The Winter Garden is located in the heart of The Landmark Hotel under a pretty magnificent glass atrium. We had afternoon tea on our second to last day in London. It was expensive at 40 pounds, but most top hotels are comparable. The service was a bit uneven. Our waitress disappeared a couple of times, and when we were done she couldn’t be found. Still, the quality of the tea, sandwiches, scones, and cakes was excellent, and The Winter Garden was a nice place to spend a Friday afternoon.

Had a lovely meal great choices for each courses, professional service at pleasant pace, and the restaurant interior was amazingly pretty on a sunny afternoon! It was a little unusual and a lot of fun. Would be a great place for special dinner, I fully recommend it.
Very close to the station too.

8 of us had breakfast here on Thursday. Most of us had the full English, at £29 per head, which seemed steep — but you did get unlimited access to the buffet as well as the full English. The buffet was pretty good, with a good selection of pastries, fruit, hams, juices, smoothies, even various different types of salmon, but we tried not to fill up on this given the forthcoming breakfast.
Good ingredients are obviously important to a good breakfast and they clearly had good ingredients here, especially the sausage and black pudding, but you would expect that for the price. For me what marks out a great breakfast is how well the parts of the breakfast which can easily be ruined are done — eg, bacon, tomato and mushrooms. The bacon was a bit soggy, the mushrooms were cold, and the tomato was just a tomato which had been heated up a bit. So an average breakfast at best

This restaurant is located in the glass atrium in the Landmark Hotel and is worth a visit even if you’re not staying at the property. The cuisine is what I would describe as contemporary British, and the kitchen takes good advantage of seasonal produce.
They have an excellent 3-​course Sunday lunch priced at £35, and the entrée options include a traditional Sunday roast served with roasted potatoes, carrots, and green beans. The chocolate and banana mousse is sinfully rich.
They also offer an afternoon tea (£30) with one of the nicest selection of sandwiches I’ve seen at this hallowed tradition, and the apple and raisin scones, still warm from the oven, are sensational.
The restaurant earns bonus points for discouraging diners from using cell phones at their table.