Ronnie’s, London, and Automat, London: ‘Good for people who don’t really care about food’

According to its web page, “Ronnie’s is a Mediterranean-inspired New York bistro” attached to “the Kith London flagship”. Kith is an upmarket clothes shop – branches in Beverly Hills, Miami Beach, Dallas, Paris and Tokyo – and according to their website, Ronnie’s is part of their “food and beverage arm”.

These are not auspicious words to read if you’re a customer. “Food and beverage” is jargon used by hotels, theme parks and cruise companies to differentiate the catering profit centre. It does not necessarily mean “restaurant”. Though it can be usefully read as a warning.

I’m visiting Ronnie’s because we are told that “experiential” dining is on the rise, that “lifestyle brands” are dabbling in “food and beverage” and that several examples have arisen in London.

Ronnie’s actually does look very “Manhattan”. It’s in an old bank on upper Regent Street and equipped with much boothery and swish ocean-liner deco trimming. The staff are uniformed, the music curated, the lighting subtle and, in general, boding well on every front. Money has been spent, effort has been made and that deserves to be recognised.

I started with matzoh ball soup, perhaps a little unsure how that fits into the all-round luxury “lifestyle” in which we were participating. The broth was clearish and unapologetically fowly. The ball was ideal, in that it looked huge and lumpen enough to provoke humour, but was actually light and even vaguely fluffy. It also contained a hidden payload of slow-braised onions. I think it might have aspired to be French onion soup, but wanted to remain true to its roots.

I followed up with an egg salad sandwich, the old diner dependable, which was a little underpowered and served in two very sprauncy little brioche rolls. My two guests had hefty burgers with fat chips, great onion rings, a rich mac ’n’ cheese and possibly the only successful “house-made” ketchup I’ve ever encountered. Dessert was a vast piece of strawberry cheesecake that easily satisfied three. Coffee… no booze and the bill.

I rarely make a big deal about price in reviews. We’re all grown-ups. The price is displayed on the website or on the menu outside the door. But here it’s important. You don’t live the Kith “lifestyle” simply by taking the family out to enjoy soup, burgers and cheesecake in a carefully themed and beautifully executed homage to urban America’s working-class food. You express it by being able, at the end, without flinching, to pay £232.

Automat is also a brand extension, but here the connection seems more tenuous. You enter through Tanner Krolle, a luxury leather goods shop on Mount Street. It feels like a gift shop, just the merch is weirdly unrelated. Trying to imagine any connection between an “Automat chicken pie” and a £460 “Padel bag” stretches the rubber envelope of surrealism. There’s a glazed rood screen separating the sacred from the profane and then a dining room that, on entering, you’ll describe as sophisticated and on exit you’ll recognise as sepulchral.

It’s probably best if I just go through this as fast as possible because there’s no joy to be wrung from the description. My nan liked her tea “weak, wet and warm”: great for a cuppa, fatal for a martini. Beneath a mound of microplaned truffle under which you could have successfully concealed a Volkswagen, quivered some pieces of cheese toastie, hiding their tepid shame. Clam chowder tasted good at the first spoonful (though it scorched the roof of my mouth off). The next few were fine, too – plenty of flavour, salt verging on surfeit, which I quite like – but it came in a trifle bowl. About a litre of soup in a glass dish I could have worn as a hat if anything here had made me feel that playful. By about halfway through, I was begging for it to be over.

The burger was overcooked. Thick, steamed and structurally unsound. I’m glad I wasn’t eating with the eight smartly dressed but unattenuated American hedgies sitting at the next table, least of many reasons being that no white shirt could survive the ketchup/meat spatter.

The lobster roll contained lobster and was served in a roll. Those are the only positive things I can type in good conscience. It was a cold hot dog roll. Not brioche, not batch-baked, not fried in clarified butter, but the kind you’d pick up at a petrol station, along with a tinfoil disposable barbecue and a packet of “snout-and-sawdust” sausages. I don’t know if the lobster meat was canned, frozen or probably hand-reared and humanely euthanised. It made no difference because it was beaten to the texture of wet tuna salad and shovelled in. Under the circumstances, the piece of “claw meat” draped over the top looked like two raised fingers.

Front-of-house was fully staffed and the servers willing, but it seemed to me neither adequately trained nor, apparently, managed. Though Tanner Krolle, like Kith, had chosen to “extend” into diner food, possibly the easiest to execute well, Automat felt beyond their area of competence.

I browsed around Kith after the meal at Ronnie’s, exploring what the rest of the lifestyle required of me. They have a vast shoe basement stocking every brand of expensive sneaker, and the clothes upstairs seemed the kind ordinary city people wear. Vaguely sporty, urban street fashion, some of it hosed with Kith logos but mainly remarkably ordinary. It was baffling… until I noticed the huge security guards on every door. Kith is, I realised, for those who want to dress like ordinary people but are disinclined to be in a shop with them. Ronnie’s, the more successful brand extension, is a statement of that “lifestyle” because it too repackages the bafflingly quotidian behind a huge barrier to entry.

If we are indeed going to see more of this kind of brand extension, then things have got truly desperate. Ronnie’s is ultimately a restaurant for people who want to eat ordinary food… just not with ordinary people. Automat has the same ambition. Though it’s also good for people who don’t particularly care about the food.

Ronnie’s, 324a Regent Street, London W1B 3BL. Starters £14-£28, sandwiches £17-£38, main £26-£46, desserts £12-£15

Automat, 127 Mount Street, London W1K 3NT. Starters £14-£26, sandwiches £24-£32, mains £28-£63