Dinner Before the Albert Hall

A hall that fills fast

The Royal Albert Hall's doors typically open well before the performance itself, and the queue for coats and programmes builds quickly once they do, so a dinner booked too close to curtain time usually means arriving flustered rather than settled. The safer plan treats the walk from restaurant to seat as its own small journey, five or ten minutes from most addresses around Kensington Gore and Exhibition Road, with a buffer built in for the cloakroom and the stairs up to your row.

The Hall's near circular shape and the Victorian streets around it can make a first time visitor's sense of direction less reliable than it should be, so choosing a restaurant on a street you already know, or one the desk can describe clearly in advance, is worth the extra minute of planning.

The building itself sits at the top of Exhibition Road, with Imperial College and the Royal College of Music close enough on either side that the whole corner feels busy with its own traffic on a concert night, students and audience moving in different directions at once. Black cabs tend to queue along Kensington Gore itself rather than the smaller side streets, worth remembering when the concert lets out and everyone in the audience wants one at the same moment.

A quieter option, if the evening allows it

For a guest who would rather not eat a full meal before three hours in a concert seat, a light plate and a glass of something at one of the hotel bars nearby works just as well as a proper dinner, saving the larger meal for afterwards instead. This suits particularly long programmes, an opera or a full symphony with two intervals, where a heavy dinner beforehand can make the middle hour of the evening feel sluggish rather than absorbing.

Ognisko, closest of all

Ognisko, the Polish restaurant at 55 Princes Gate, sits close enough to the Hall that a table there barely counts as leaving the neighbourhood, chandeliers overhead and a menu built around dumplings, borscht and a properly stocked vodka list. It runs at a steady pace rather than a rushed one, which makes it a good choice for guests who would rather eat well in fifty minutes than eat quickly in thirty, and its proximity means a booking there rarely needs more than a ten minute margin before curtain.

The building itself has served the same community since the mid twentieth century, and the dining room's grand, slightly faded elegance suits an evening built around a concert rather better than a starkly modern restaurant would. A table by the window looks straight onto Princes Gate, close enough to watch the evening's audience beginning to gather before you have even finished the first course.

Two hotel dining rooms worth the short walk

The Baglioni's own restaurant, a few minutes across the park side of Kensington Gore, keeps an Italian aperitivo hour that suits an early start before a concert particularly well, covered in full in the guide to an evening at the Baglioni. A little further towards South Kensington, the Ampersand's Drawing Rooms serve a lighter plate for guests who would rather not sit down to a full dinner before three hours in a concert seat, an option worth knowing about on a night when the programme itself is the main event.

Both hotels sit within easy reach of Kensington and the Hall alike, which makes either a sensible base for an evening that combines dinner, a performance and, afterwards, a booking that continues back at the hotel itself.

Timing the table around curtain

Restaurants near any concert hall tend to know their neighbourhood's habits, and kitchens around the Albert Hall are used to seating a table early enough to have you fed, paid and walking by the time doors open. Booking under your own name and mentioning the performance time when you reserve usually gets the kitchen working to that clock without being asked twice, and a table booked for a good ninety minutes before curtain rarely runs into trouble even on a busy night.

On the busiest concert nights, particularly during the summer Proms season, it is worth booking the table a few days ahead rather than the same afternoon, since several restaurants around the Hall fill quickly once a popular programme is announced. A restaurant that knows the Hall's schedule will often ask which performance you are attending as a matter of routine, since it tells the kitchen almost exactly what time the table needs to turn.

After the last note

Concerts at the Hall rarely finish before ten, by which point most kitchens nearby have stopped taking orders, so a late supper after a performance is better planned as a hotel bar nightcap than a second sit down meal. Both the Baglioni's Brunello and the Ampersand's Drawing Rooms keep later hours than the neighbourhood's independent restaurants, useful to know if the evening is meant to continue rather than end at the Hall's own doors. A short walk rather than a taxi often makes more sense at this hour too, since the crowd leaving the Hall tends to fill the taxi rank faster than it clears once the last of the evening's applause has properly died down.

Booking a concert evening

For a dinner date built around a performance, tell the desk the curtain time as well as the restaurant, and the evening is planned backwards from it rather than forwards from an arbitrary start. Three hours at £700 suits dinner and the performance together when the meal stays brisk, and the four hour line at £900 gives more room either side. Every figure and length sits on the rates page.

Companions who plan around the Hall

Sonya follows the ballet whenever it comes to the Royal Albert Hall and keeps a quiet dinner close by rather than rushing the meal beforehand. Samanta, a violinist by training, treats an evening built around a concert as close to a professional pleasure, and she knows Ognisko's menu as well as she knows the programme notes. Both are filed among the statuesque companions in the collection, and either turns a concert night into a proper evening rather than a performance squeezed between other plans.