Dante Mayfair, inside Claridge’s on Brook Street in London, has been created, the hotel’s management says, to become “the living room of Mayfair”. It’s a charming idea: pop in, have a cuppa or a bowl of pappardelle bolognese, or lie about on the fancy sofas wearing elasticated tracksuit bottoms and slurping soft-serve with s’mores. No, sorry, I’ve gone too far: it’s nowhere near that informal.

Still, like many well-used living rooms, this one has been rearranged, redecorated and repurposed many times over the years. I’ve eaten fancy-schmancy Simon Rogan dinners here when it was Fera, as well as his table experience at Aulis during which venture capitalist “foodies” bored the pants off me over a 12-course meal in the kitchen itself. I’ve stared unmoved at Daniel Humm’s New York-style pomp at the short-lived Davies and Brook, and have visited several times since Claridge’s took matters in-house in the shape of a rather anonymous ye olde British brasserie.

Tuna tartare at Dante Mayfair, where ‘service is warm, slick, effusive and casual’.

Now I’m here for Dante, and we’re back in New York again, this time in the hands of Linden Pride and Nathalie Hudson, with no named chef at all, although there’s absolutely definitely a man plinky-plonking his way through John Legend’s Ordinary People on the piano. Pride and Hudson are a husband-and-wife team from Sydney, Australia, who met at college, moved to New York and in 2015 bought Caffe Dante, an institution of a Greenwich Village coffee house that’s been open since 1915. By 2019, the place had been named the world’s best bar. The couple’s new space on Brook Street is a restaurant site in need of stability and comprehensible finery, as well as of caviar tarts with champagne pearls, shrimp cocktails and lobster linguine, and of caviar martinis and vintage or chocolate negronis.

If you like, you can enter via a small side door on Davies Street, but ignore that. The whole point of going to Claridge’s in the first place is to sweep in through the grand main hotel entrance past the men in top hats – you need to feel like Paddington, a little bear in a big city just making it on your own. Take a right turn, hand in your coat at the beautiful little cloakroom, then quickly powder your nose in the vintage loos where nice ladies polish the sinks. Order a marmalade sandwich … sorry, I mean dover sole meunière or veal milanese. For this part of Mayfair, the prices are weirdly reasonable – a bowl of fazzoletti with pesto may be £27, but you should see how much they charge for pasta at Bacchanalia just down the road – and a mini martini is a tenner between 3pm and 5pm.

‘The sauce lacked depth and the pasta was a touch overcooked’: Dante’s pappardelle al ragu, or house bolognese.

Dante is useful for client lunches or intimate tête-à-têtes when you want to be heard perfectly and don’t want to be constantly interrupted by the waiting staff. After all, no one needs a tomato and peach salad with marinated feta and freekeh explained to them, even though this one is very fresh, very nicely arranged and whispers more of California than of Italy. A large plate of San Daniele prosciutto comes with baked mozzarella, and the iceberg salad features very neatly dressed lettuce wedges. The pappardelle al ragu, or house bolognese, lacks depth and the pasta is a touch overcooked, but chicken alla diavola with green goddess dressing is earthy and fresh. Are chips ever worth £11? Probably not, but then this is Claridge’s, not Clacton seafront.

I do wonder, however, whether Dante’s most noteworthy offering is its “dessert cocktail” list, which is aimed squarely at that moment after the main course when customers wrinkle their noses at shelling out on “something sweet” but will happily carry on drinking. That’s when the rounds of honey bees (tequila, coffee liqueur, amontillado, raspberry, salted honey cream) are ordered. And wait, what? It comes with my own face printed on top of it!?! Dante has a piece of kit that stamps photographs on to the foam in edible ink, and I defy anyone not to be exhilarated by that – or to think that it’s not perfectly sensible to have a nonna’s alexander or a grasshopper afterwards. We wanted pudding, too, though, and the waiter asked if we fancied the sticky toffee doughnut with whisky flambé. Yes. Yes, please. Yes, I would like you to set fire to things. It goes up like a firework and is a sweet, sticky mess.

Dante Mayfair’s sticky toffee doughnut with whisky flambé ‘goes up like a firework’.

On this Tuesday lunchtime, Dante was probably the quietest place in Mayfair. A small, elegant wedding had taken over the side room, while a few hotel residents were eating burgers in the main room. Service was warm, slick, effusive and casual, and completely on it. The issue with a semi-casual restaurant inside Claridge’s is that the very name scares off the general public. But you could invite anyone here, and at any time; I’d use it for breakfasts and meet-ups. Dante is not a destination dinner, but it is, as promised, a living room. It won’t win prizes for its food, but it is friendly and handy as hell, which in Mayfair these days is exceptionally rare.

Dante Mayfair Claridge’s, Brook Street, London W1, 020-7629 8860. Open all week, noon-9.30pm (10.30pm Thurs-Sat); breakfast 8-11am. From about £60 a head à la carte, plus drinks and service