Alex Dilling at Hotel Café Royal

Verdict: Book It; If You Can Get a Table

The common assumption about Alex Dilling at Hotel Café Royal is that it trades on its address: a grand Regent Street hotel, a famous postcode, the kind of room that signals occasion before a single plate arrives. That framing undersells what is actually happening in the kitchen. This is a two-Michelin-star Modern French restaurant that has held that rating since 2024, climbed to #80 on Opinionated About Dining's Classical in Europe list in 2025 (up from #99 the year before), and scored 85 points on La Liste's 2026 ranking. The trajectory matters; this is a kitchen moving forward, not coasting on a prestigious interior.

What You're Booking

Alex Dilling opened his eponymous restaurant inside Hotel Café Royal relatively recently, the most meaningful change for returning diners is the sharpening of the cooking itself: the OAD ranking climb from #105 in 2023 to #80 in 2025 is not noise, it reflects a kitchen deepening its technical command over a short period. For the explorer-minded diner who tracks these lists, that upward arc is a signal worth acting on now, before the booking window tightens further.

The cuisine is Modern French in the classical tradition, precise, ingredient-led, built around sourcing that La Liste specifically called out: Cornish sardines, Scottish girolles, Kaluga caviar. These are not decorative name-drops; they point to a kitchen that selects produce with specificity and then subordinates technique to the ingredient rather than the reverse. Every element on the plate, according to La Liste's panel, contributes its own flavour note to a coherent whole. For a diner who uses tasting menus to take the measure of a chef's thinking, that coherence, rather than showmanship, is the key signal.

The restaurant sits inside the Hotel Café Royal at 68 Regent Street, W1B 4DY. The setting is intimate and discreet relative to the grandeur of the building around it, which is worth knowing: this is not a vast hotel dining room designed to impress with scale. The room itself creates a contained, focused environment that suits the cooking's register. Diners looking for theatrical spectacle alongside their meal, think Sketch's Lecture Room for pure visual drama, will find Alex Dilling more restrained, that restraint is a feature, not a limitation. If you want to compare on atmosphere, Sketch, The Lecture Room and Library offers a more overtly theatrical dining environment; Alex Dilling is for diners who want the plate to be the event.

The Counter Question

Editorial angle here matters for how you choose to book. Alex Dilling's counter or chef's table seating, where available, changes the nature of the experience in a way that the standard dining room does not fully replicate. At this level of Modern French cooking, proximity to the kitchen translates into a different reading of the menu: you see the pace, the precision, the mise en place discipline that makes the final plate possible. For a diner who wants depth rather than just a fine meal, requesting counter or kitchen-adjacent seating when booking is worth the specific ask. It does not guarantee access, but it is the kind of logistical detail that separates a memorable evening from a merely excellent one.

Booking and Practical Details

Restaurant is open Tuesday through Friday from 6 to 11:30 pm, Saturday for lunch (12 to 4:30 pm) and dinner (6 to 11:30 pm), and is closed Sunday and Monday. The Saturday lunch sitting is the one to target if your schedule allows, it is the least pressured window at a venue of this calibre, it offers the full kitchen at a point in the week when pacing tends to be more relaxed. Booking difficulty is rated near-impossible, which means you should be working weeks to months ahead, particularly for Friday and Saturday evenings. The price point is ££££, positioning it firmly in London's top-tier tasting menu bracket alongside CORE by Clare Smyth, Restaurant Gordon Ramsay, and The Ledbury.

For London context, Gauthier Soho and Jean George at the Connaught offer French-leaning fine dining at comparable price points, though neither carries the same two-star, top-100 OAD credentials as Dilling currently. If you're comparing within the hotel-restaurant category specifically, The Cocochine and July are worth knowing about for different reasons, though both operate at a different tier.

The 4.2 may reflect the polarising effect of high-expectation dining on review platforms as much as anything about the cooking's quality.

If you're building a London trip around serious restaurants, our full London restaurants guide covers the full range. For the wider context of where Dilling sits in the UK's two-star tier, it is useful to benchmark against venues like The Fat Duck in Bray, L'Enclume in Cartmel, and Moor Hall in Aughton, each approaching the best of the UK fine dining hierarchy from a different regional and stylistic base. For Modern French specifically in Europe, Schanz in Piesport and Coeur D'Artichaut in Münster occupy a similar classical register and appear alongside Dilling in OAD's European rankings. Closer to home, Gidleigh Park in Chagford, Hand and Flowers in Marlow, and hide and fox in Saltwood represent alternative routes to serious cooking outside the capital, each with its own booking and value calculus.

If you're staying in central London, our full London hotels guide, London bars guide, and London experiences guide will help you build out the rest of the trip.

The Bottom Line

Book Alex Dilling if: you are serious about classical French technique, you want a two-star tasting menu in a room that focuses attention on the food rather than the spectacle, you are willing to plan well ahead. The rising OAD ranking and consistent Michelin recognition across three consecutive years make this one of the stronger bets in London's upper-tier dining right now. If you can get counter seating, ask for it. If you cannot land a table, CORE by Clare Smyth and The Ledbury are the most comparable experiences at this tier.