Dorchester Grill Room

A younger hand in the Dorchester frame

The lobster Thermidor reference stays close to the pass as Tom Booton, chef at The Grill by Tom Booton in Mayfair, London, works inside The Dorchester’s grill room. His task is not to make the hotel forget itself. It is to change the tempo of a room with its own gravity, keeping the address intact while letting a lighter, younger register move through the service. Booton first held the kitchen here as head chef at The Dorchester and The Grill at The Dorchester from 2019 to 2023, a period that put him inside one of London’s more closely watched hotel dining rooms. Since 2023, he has served as executive chef of The Grill by Tom Booton at The Dorchester, where the name ties cook and room together more directly. That distinction matters. In a house built on continuity, the chef’s hand has to be legible without becoming louder than the room.

Classics kept on the edge

The program turns on modern British grill cooking, with seafood, steakhouse habits, and hotel dining discipline held in the same frame. The signatures named by the house are clear about the register: modern lobster Thermidor, black pudding on toast with confit egg yolk and pork fat, Omelette Arnold Bennett, strawberry and white chocolate mille-feuille, and sticky toffee pudding. They are not obscure references. Booton works with dishes that already carry memory, then adjusts the weight, pace, and finish for a dining room that now carries his name. The kitchen offers à la carte, tasting menu, and set menu formats, so the pass has to hold two kinds of control at once: the steadiness of a grill room and the timing of a more composed modern service. The beverage side is part of that same polish, with wine and cocktails sitting alongside the food rather than outside it.

The room lets the shift register

The room remains a hotel grill room before it becomes anything else. Wood-panelled warmth, soft lighting, and plush finishes give the service its Dorchester weight, but the energy is not sealed behind ceremony. Booton has spoken of making the restaurant more modern, with fresh energy and a different atmosphere, and that reads most clearly in the relation between the pass and the floor. It has Mayfair composure, not stiffness. The counterpoint is useful: black pudding on toast can sit beside lobster Thermidor, and both can belong under the same ceiling.

The house keeps its name on the door

The Grill by Tom Booton opened under its current name in 2023, drawing the chef’s authorship into the public identity of the restaurant without cutting it away from The Dorchester. That is the real pressure of the station. A younger chef can move the room, but the room still answers to the hotel. For now, the measure is in service after service, in whether sticky toffee pudding, Omelette Arnold Bennett, and the Dorchester grill room continue to sound like the same place.