Theo Randall Cucina Italiana

Theo Randall has cooked regional Italian food off the lobby of the InterContinental at Hyde Park Corner since November 2006, drawing on the years he spent running the kitchen at the River Café. The menu changes daily around what the markets and his own trips to Italy turn up, and the wine list runs almost entirely Italian. Twenty years in, he is still usually at the pass.

The room was reworked in warm wood, terrazzo and Carrara marble, with muted olive and grey tones drawn from the Italian countryside. A build-your-own Negroni service, the Negronificio, lets guests choose their own gin, vermouth and bitters at the table. A terrace off Park Lane opens in the warmer months.

Two private rooms sit off the main floor. The Amalfi Room seats forty and holds fifty for a reception; the smaller Puglia Room takes eighteen, its walls hung with bright contemporary canvases. The two connect for parties of up to fifty-eight, and the whole restaurant can be taken exclusively for a hundred and sixty seated or two hundred standing, with menus built alongside the kitchen.