BlackBook Back in the BlackBook Back in the Swing STAYING PUT The New Inn Crowd Intriguing hotels are emerging in prominent London corners Outside Hotel Café Royal & Fizz in The Goring Garden promises an indulgent selection of crustacea and champagnes. On Regent Street, the Hotel Café Royal ( hotelcaferoyal.com) has revealed two brand-new terraces this summer. The Green Bar Terrace, on Glasshouse Street, is a partnership with the New Zealand winemaker Cloudy Bay that will offer a special oyster menu on Saturday afternoons. And the other, named Cakes & Bubbles, is a partnership with Veuve Clicquot and the fabled pâtissier Albert Adrià (once of El Bulli and brother of Ferran), whose fanciful light-as-air creations would be almost too beautiful to eat were they not so delicious. Also tucked away in Mayfair is the Four Seasons at Park Lane ( fourseasons.com), whose Amaranto restaurant now spills into its garden, which faces Hyde Park across Park Lane. Finally, moving eastward, Rosewood London ( rosewoodhotels.com) has brought a slice of Scotland to its grand courtyard: called the Macallan Manor House, it combines the culinary chops of the Roca Brothers with the superlative spirits of its namesake distillery. The building that houses The Ned, the 2017 collaboration between the US-based Sydell Group and Soho House, was built as a bank. But Sydell’s next London project, NoMad London (thenomadhotel.com), had even less promising beginnings, having previously housed Bow Street Magistrates Court, complete with prisoners’ cells. Indeed, the 92-room hotel, directly opposite the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, will continue to share the premises with the forthcoming Bow Street Police Museum, which will occupy what was the adjacent police station and which Sydell will initially fund. There’ll be nothing penitential about its new incarnation, however, which has been designed by the New York studio Roman and Williams (the practice behind The Standard, High Line) and hung with work by US artists. For if, when it opened the original and hugely alluring NoMad (for North of Madison Square Park) in New York, its object was to bring a European sensibility to Manhattan (its designer was Jacques Garcia; its original chef Daniel Humm), here the vibe will be all-American – all, that is, except the self-styled British pub. Though it’s likely to be the only one in England called Side Hustle and specialising in agave-based cocktails, which show every sign of being the apéro of this summer. A 10-minute walk west from the NoMad brings you to Leicester Square, From left: candlelit dining in the muralled Magistrates’ Courtroom, now a ballroom, at NoMad; a suite at The Lost Poet in Notting Hill The infinity pool at the new Pan Pacific London home of Edwardian Hotels’ forthcoming The Londoner (thelondoner.com), a 16-storey tower, faced in Portland stone and 15,000 handmade tiles glazed in a striking cobalt blue, housing six restaurants, two cinemas, a subterranean spa and 350 rooms and suites designed by Yabu Pushelberg. Always a name to inspire confidence, the standout design studio also crafted the interiors of the 237-room Pan Pacific London (panpacific.com), the Singaporebased group’s first European outpost and another high-rise debut, this time across from Liverpool Street Station, opening this summer as well. On a much smaller scale, The Lost Poet (thelostpoet.co.uk), across town on Notting Hill’s Portobello Road and due in June, calls itself a “curated townhouse” rather than a hotel. It’s a Victorian terraced home with just four guest rooms, one per floor, each an essay in eclecticism that mixes antiques and fine art with wallpapers and textiles from designers such as Maison C, House of Hackney and Timorous Beasties. In Mayfair, The Beaumont ( thebeaumont.com) is not new, having opened in 2014, but it too has had the builders in this past year, having secured permission to add an extension containing a further 25 rooms and suites. Its Colony Grill Room restaurant also has a new look (and a new chef in Ben Boeynaems), as have its lobby, bar and library lounge, all the work of the French architect Thierry Despont, so expect something lavish. PHOTOS CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: © CAFE ROYAL, © PAN PACIFIC, © THE LOST POET HOTEL, SIMON UPTON 28 CENTURION-MAGAZINE.COM
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