Dean Street Townhouse hotel room review

Lil'sis & I are staying at the new Dean Street Townhouse hotel in London's Soho this evening. Owned by the Soho House group, it opened just three days ago and I was asked if I'd like to spend a night here by the publicist.

Given that I am a blogger, and that I make it very clear that I will, as I do in print, be completely objective about my experience, regardless of the fact I am being comped, one presumes that the hotel must be pretty confident about the quality of its rooms.

And, in this case, they have every right to be. It's possibly the best equipped hotel room I've ever explored. From the piles of the latest glossies to the hair grips for blow drying your hair I can't think of anything that might improve this room. Well, nothing that I'm willing to put in print...

In fact I'm so blown away by my room that I made a short review film to show you all. That way you'll know that I haven't gone all hyperbolic just because I'm not paying for it!

Hotel review: Mother daughter bonding at The Halkin, London

It’s weird living abroad. On one hand it’s quite useful being thousands of miles and five, sometimes eight hours out of sync from family arguments, squabbling infants and the overly familiar quotidian grind. On the other it is rather miserable not being able to give & receive comforting hugs. Playing on Facebook does not make up for proper face time.

So when I go back to England my first priority is to spend proper time with my family & see as many of my wonderful friends as I can possibly manage. There are always godchildren & bundles of new infants to prod, plus there’s usually a wedding I’ve missed or engagement to celebrate.

I’m like a bunny out of a trap as I land at Heathrow, usually whizzing straight to my sister’s house in Kentish Town for an intensive debrief, and then getting up at 7am to do a stream of breakfasts, lunches, coffees, drinks & suppers, all woven between meetings & work stuff. It's trickier seeing my parents as they don't live in London, (or together for that matter), so I have to grab any opportunity to see them.

Last month I landed in London the day before my mother flew in from Verona, so I persuaded her to spend the night in London with me before heading to the country. I always find it’s best to book a hotel together for the proper mother-daughter bonding experience; we always end up squabbling when together en masse in my sister & Posetta Baddog's one bedroom London flat.

My mother, being of the Birkin bag & Chanel pump-ed persuasion, doesn’t really do anything outside of London's W or SW postcodes unless forced so when I was offered a suite at The Halkin in Belgravia, just behind Hyde Park Corner, I jumped on it. I used to stay at its sister hotel the modernist Metropolitan on Park Lane when I was an NY magazine editor (convenient for 8am appointments to visa wrangle at the US Embassy), but had yet to experience the minimalist taupe experience of The Halkin.

And goodness, it is taupe. And beige. And sepia. And pale cocoa. And other synonyms I can’t be bothered to look up. From the Buddha in the entrance hall to the Como Shambhala aromatherapy products in the bathroom, it may well be the most calming environment in which I have stayed. It’s so tranquil that it’s the hotel equivalent of Prozac. They should have a Halkin in Milan or in Paris for stroppy fashion editors to stay in during the collections.

The calmness was equally good for a mother/daughter stay because we are quite capable of going from smiles to snarls to smiles in seconds. But we seemed unable to have one of our signature blow ups here. It probably helped that when the Front Desk rang to say she (& her luggage) had arrived, I poured us glasses of super chilled Champagne and drew her a deep bath using scoops of fragrant bath salts from the oversized jar in the oversized bathroom. I do find pre-empting maternal requests tends to diminish potential snappiness.

Lulled & cosseted into inertia, leaving the hotel was far beyond our capabilities. Not that this mattered: we had reservations downstairs at Nahm, David Thompson’s extraordinary Michelin-starred Thai restaurant (more of this to come later).

The Halkin really is a boutique hotel for grown-ups: it feels discreet, the scale is intensely intimate (but not claustrophobic), there are no spread out communal areas, soaring atria or chattering tourists, the service is beyond charming. The suite ticked nearly all my demanding boxes: the best soup-plate showerhead I’ve come across in a hotel anywhere, generous toiletries, a proper well-lit dressing table in the bedroom (as opposed to a mirror-free desk or expecting us to balance warpaint on the side of a basin) and plenty of cat-swinging space.

Sure the Asian chic interiors are a little disconcerting inside a Georgian stucco fronted townhouse, but somehow it all comes together. And, best of all, less than half a mile from Knightsbridge, Horrids & Harvey Nicks, cradled in our temporary taupe universe, we felt as though we were on holiday in London. And, as dyed in the wool Londoners, you can’t get better than that.

LLG was a guest of The Halkin Hotel (but if she thought it sucked, she would say so)

The Cannes Dolce party vs The Halkin Hotel

Several years ago I went to the Cannes Film Festival every May for work and for play. It’s a quite extraordinary experience, but it is not exactly what I would call endless fun. Everyone is there to work, from the A list stars promoting their movies to the socialites networking on the flotilla of enormous yachts moored out in the bay. Sleeping, eating: they don’t really factor in on any Cannes schedule. It’s just one whirl of interviews, round tables, appointments, meetings, broadcasts, copy filing, screenings, premieres & parties (which you have to attend) over fifteen days of coffee & Champagne-fuelled insanity.

Too busy stuck in the Dantesque hell of press junkets and round table interviews with the talent, I never had time to go back to my hotel to dress for screenings (you have to wear proper Black Tie to enter the Palais des Festivals), so I would hop it to the Christian Dior suite at The Martinez, where they would kindly do my make up, and change into my frock (balled up in the bottom of my daybag), before dashing down the length of the Croisette to The Majestic Hotel to find whoever was hosting me at that evening’s premiere.

Walking the red carpet at Cannes is not an exercise for the chronically shy or the self conscious. There is no back entrance: everyone attending has to climb those stairs (usually in vertiginous heels) and, sooner or later, you will see your face flashed up on the big TV screens. Which is just great when you have been invited by, say, a well-known jewellery company and your fellow guests include Eve Herzigova. No hungover English writer in a crumpled dress with a giant spot on her forehead shows to advantage when blown up ten feet high next to gorgeous Eva in couture & half a million quid's worth of bling.

Then I changed jobs and, after five years, Cannes attendance was no longer necessary. But the next year MTV kindly offered to fly me out for their legendary party and I had a ball. I wasn’t there to work, and suddenly I could see the point of Cannes when I didn’t have to get up at 6am to file copy after reeling in from late night networking drinks at Le Petit Martinez or Soho House at 4am.

I haven’t been to Cannes since, and then Dolce & Gabbana kindly invited me to their super glam party at the close of the Festival last week. Knowing how much fun those parties can be when you don't have to ask intrusive questions or find out what everyone is wearing, & having seen the party coverage, I’m wishing I could have made it.

But I did have a very, very good reason for not going: I had already arranged to book into a suite at The Halkin Hotel in London’s Belgravia for a mother & daughter escape that same night. Altho, given a choice between the Dolce party in Cannes & eating supper at David Thompson’s Nahm restaurant and holing up in a glorious taupe suite, it was a very, very close call.

California eating & drinking

In my parallel life eating in fabulous restaurants is part and parcel of what I do but, on the road on my own for most of my time in California, eating in the kind of places you read about in glossy mags really hasn’t been part of my game plan.

Whilst I haven’t been screeching in on two wheels to the IHOP parking lot, lining up at the Jack in the Box drive-thru or jonesing for a Denny’s breakfast, I have eaten a lot of fabulous sandwiches (hello Sebastian’s), eaten lip smacking burritos in way too many Mexican hole in the walls, and scarfed up burgers & fries and waffles & ice cream at the counter in far more diners than I can count.

There’s just something immensely comfortingly and addictively delicious about everyday American food and I can’t get enough of it. (Neither, it would seem, can a lot of America’s generously proportioned population.)

That’s not to say I’ve completely ignored the over-hyped realm of expense account restaurants. I’ve had supper at Koi (excellent food, suburban crowd), lunch at The Ivy (chopped salad that resembled grass clippings) and excellent wine with okay food at The Polo Lounge, (if one ignored the stale bread on the table).

But the two loveliest meals I’ve eaten here in Los Angeles have been at opposite ends of the culinary realm, the first in a private home, the second at a hotel, with each pairing ingredients in wonderful ways. The first was at my friend Miss Whistle’s home high up in Laurel Canyon.

Between her & her husband they cooked up a stunning plateful of food with two particular dishes that had me wondering if anyone would notice if I surreptitiously wiped my plate with a grubby finger: a salad with frisée, pine nuts and little cubes of partly caramelised bright orange squash which looked alluring and tasted better, and a texturally brilliant creamy gratin of cauliflower and fennel, with classic gratineed crunchy cheese above, and fennel fronds lurking below.

The second was the wine & cheese pairing prelude to an excellent tasting menu eaten at the Hotel Bel-Air. Executive Chef Dan Olsen has an immaculate palate and, whilst the grande bouffe at the Chef’s table with its view of the busy kitchen was scrumptious, it was his small plates that we ate on the pretty flower bedecked terrace, before waddling wine-dazed into the private dining room that have remained firmly stuck in my mind.

The Hotel Bel-Air's charming and enthusiastic wine director Emmanuel Faure really pulled out the stops for us and, as this is a blog and not a newspaper, I'm indulging myself by reproducing the menu below:

Bermuda Triangle (Cypress Grove, CA. Ash covered goat, soft)
Morel mushroom & pickled onion salad
Peter Michael L’Apres Midi Sauvignon Blanc 2003

Brillat Savarin (Normandy. Triple crème, cow)
Black mission fig sandwich
Moraga Vineyard 2002

San Andreas (Bellwether Farms, CA. Raw sheep’s milk, hard)
Marcona almond brittle & black olive tapenade
Tyler Vineyard ‘Dierberg Vineyard’ Santa Maria Valley 2006

Crater Lake Blue (Rogue Creamery, Oregon. Cow)
Fruit & nut crisp and port gelee
Ojai Vineyard Botrytis Chardonnay 2006

The indulgent smooth creaminess of the Brillat Savarin against crispy, buttery toast, the sweet stickiness of the reduced figs and the hit of the complex but smooth red was absolutely the most inspired combination I’ve swallowed this year. It actually stopped me talking for a full minute. And, even tho I knew a gargantuan supper was coming, I cldn’t stop shooting lustful glances at everyone else’s plates. I could have eaten this for breakfast, lunch & supper.

As for the wine, both reds, (the Moraga Vineyard 2002 & the Tyler Vineyard ‘Dierberg Vineyard’ Santa Maria Valley 2006) were chock full of fruit & alcohol but didn’t punch out our taste buds as so many high alcohol Californian reds do these days.

The Tyler Vineyard is a single varietal – a pinot noir, with lots of raspberry and rich depth, but the standout was the house blend from the pocket sized Moraga estate in Bel-Air itself, making it truly local. They produce just one glorious red, a Bordeaux style blend of Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot with a small amount of Cabernet Franc and Petit Verdot. The 02 has a long finish, and a wonderful balanced complexity with lots of lovely blackcurrant. It made properly excellent drinking.

I hadn’t realised that the Californian climate could produce botrytised wines, and the Ojai Chardonnay 06 was from a production of just two barrels. Sweet & syrupy with pineapple but with a balance of minerality, it was a revelation.

And now, after being head down in the Californian food & wine trough for forty-nine days, I am preparing to fly to England from LAX on Tuesday. I have a list of food to eat in London, from breakfast at The Wolseley and Vietnamese on Kingsland Road through to penne al'arrabiata at the Italian café on Hampstead Heath and an enormous Indian takeaway from, well, anywhere.

But I think what I really need is a large green salad.

The Ritz Carlton San Francisco

I’m back in San Francisco almost exactly one month after I was last here. I’ve always loved this city and I’m contemplating moving here when my lease is up in New York in August. It’s the perfect size, the weather is a more benign version of England’s, the food & restaurants are exceptional and I have lots of splendid friends & acquaintance. The hills aren’t quite such a draw: I haven’t got used to driving at 45 degrees, although I’m certainly appreciating being perched on top of Nob Hill right now.

That’s because after a wonderful week staying with one of my oldest friends, Julian Shah-Tayler in his huge crazy house full of musicians in LA’s Koreatown, and fifteen hours of driving up the coast road (I took a very circuitous scenic route), I have retreated into the luxurious splendour of the San Francisco Ritz Carlton for two days.


And, really, there is no better place to hole up in this city of great hotels. Although the hotel is large (336 rooms), and the frontage staggeringly neo-classically impressive, it’s actually rather intimate in scale. There are no echoing bare corridors here: gently lit by sconces, the carpet sinks beneath your feet, and the staff gently whisk through, greeting you by name.

I’ve been given a delicious 900 square foot suite on the Club Floor and, consequently have not left the hotel today. There’s a dedicated drawing room for Club guests, with giant glass jars of home baked cookies (I’ve been positioned right next to it all afternoon), and complimentary snacks are served all day. With copy to file and books to read, I can’t see any reason to stick my nose outside in the rain.

And by ‘snacks’ I mean a proper breakfast, cheese & appetizers at lunchtime, full afternoon tea, hors d’oeuvres in the early evening and deserts & chocolate fondue later on. Did I mention the full bar?

The Club Floor even offers complimentary pressing so, whilst I hotfooted it down to the Fitness Center to swim, steam and Jacuzzi myself into oblivion, my crumpled silk dresses, cocktail frocks and tux were picked up and promptly returned looking pristine in hanging zipper covers.

But it’s my room that has me properly cocooned in luxe-ness. Without wishing to rub it in, I’m no stranger to the five star hotel room: I’ve reviewed more of them than I can count, from Barcelona to Miami, Bangkok to Ibiza. Not a lot impresses me any more, and in my private life I’m just as likely to bed down in a youth hostel as I am in a smart hotel. After all, it’s only a bed. And, whether or not I'm being comped, high end or low, if I don't like it, I'll tell you.

But then you stay somewhere that gets it so right that you start to wish that ginormous one bedroom suites came as standard. Although it’s not just the jaw dropping size of my current quarters that has me impressed (after all, size isn’t everything), it’s the attention to detail. I’m obsessed with this. I’ve stayed in too many hotels obviously designed by men for men, that forget we need hair conditioner, cotton wool, full length mirrors, somewhere well lit to put on make-up that isn’t the edge of a basin unit, plenty of hangers - padded & wooden, large safes for purses & laptops and more than one luggage stand. And that’s for starters.

My room has all this. And more. Much, much more. 1000 thread count Frette sheets & ten cloud like pillows on my king size bed. There’s a ring stand by the basin, a full manicure set, a glass jar of cotton wool, an alarm clock, Bulgari toiletries from after-shave to facial moisturizer, piles & piles of fluffy towels, an iPod dock, a professional make up mirror on the separate dressing table, an LCD TV in the bathroom and a marble shower big enough for… well, you get the idea.


I had a squint at the entry level rooms here, the Deluxes, and they are just as well proportioned, (4-500 sq ft) with the same attention to detail: I noted the pot plants on the desks, umbrellas, ironing boards and mini-dressing areas.


In fact I am so blissfully happy in my current quarters that I am considering nipping back upstairs to hide in the suite’s loo after I check out. Or maybe in the separate dressing room. Or perhaps behind the sofa in the living room. Or behind the vast flat screen TV in the bedroom.

LLG is a guest of the Ritz Carlton San Francisco

Photo: my bedroom

Why can't five star hotels get it right when a California Best Western can?

I’m fed up with staying in five star hotels that ignore the basics and charge the earth for extras. Take Rome’s EUR600 a night Hotel de Russie which charges for DVD player rental or the Grand et Milan which has closets the size of gym lockers and charges EUR6 for a small bottle of water.

I know I wasn’t supposed to be reviewing the Best Western where I stayed last night, especially when they gave me a swanky upgrade because they found out for whom I write, but I was so impressed with the bells & whistles they throw in just because, and which some of the best hotels in the world don’t consider necessary, that I can’t resist giving them an extra shout out.

The bathroom. They provide everything from make-up remover wipes & nail varnish remover pads to hair conditioner (even the smartest hotels seem to forget that most women use conditioner as well as shampoo), thick towelling bath robes that reach to the feet (I’m 5’6”), rather than stopping at the knee, & plenty of towels and flannels (but with an eco laundry policy).

The room itself. All these were present and correct: a four cup filter coffee machine with real & decaf, a mini bar that charges shop prices (and includes gummy bears, family size packs of chocolate chip cookies and Laughing Cow cheese), padded coat hangers as well as wooden ones that aren’t perma attached to the rail, two collapsible luggage stands (the norm is one), the biggest safe I’ve seen in a hotel: large enough for a generous handbag and more, a real hairdryer – not a beige one attached to the wall wafting air, a whole set of closet drawers rather than annoying cubby holes for your clothes, a DVD player, a proper alarm clock, an Ethernet cable (as opposed to assuming you have your own for when the Wi-FI isn’t working) and an eiderdown AND a duvet for extra squishy comfiness in bed.

These things are not rocket science. Why then do I have to be amazed that a motel franchise in California gets it?

A perfect day

Today I shall mostly be eating & sleeping. Since I left for London on the 17th April I haven't had a moment of downtime, bar sitting in Heathrow waiting for my delayed flight. (I don't count flying as downtime, because sitting in goat with my knees around my ears for seven hours is not a relaxing experience, especially when you have a fat man hogging the arm rest, and letting his blubber encroach on my seat.)

J the ebullient actor is staying here in JD's room 'till Monday evening, so I've scrubbed the apt, bought flowers (all the flower stands are full of fresh lilac for $6 a bunch) and generally tried not to scatter my possessions around the place.

H & I had a quintessential NY day yesterday in the 22C sunshine: a stroll through the East Village, brunch & Bloody Marys at Life Café in Alphabet City, a spot of bike shopping in the flea market on East 11th, and then up to the UES for culture. The Cooper Hewitt, again for me, then three hours in the Met, roaming through four millennia. Plus a detour to see the Frank Stella scupltures perched on the Met's Roof Garden. One of my new favourite places: 360 views over Central Park and Manhattan, plus the acme of civilisation - a daytime martini bar. Genius.

Cocktails at The Bowery Hotel (not as hip as it would like to be) and yakitori & Japanese tapas at Village Yokocho on Stuyvesant St in the East Village just about finished me off. Poor H: I was so thoroughly tired by this point that I clung onto his arm for support as he walked me home. Hopefully I will have revived and be able to function by the time we meet for supper at The Lovely Day this evening.

Picture: The view over Central Park from the Metropolitan Museum's Rooftop bar

Calm day

Wrote all afternoon, sorted my wardrobe ( why did I think it necessary to bring 14 pairs of shoes & 8 handbags with me to Manhattan?) and, best of all, initiated the final stages of Mission: M.

JD's boyfriend & I have been plotting the execution of his surprise visit for ten days. I got a grumpy & hungover JD to The Bowery Hotel at 4pm by pretending we were meeting a record label boss who needed a new stylist. Scowling like a cross kitten, she slumped onto a sofa in the lobby, & I promptly disappeared to hide behind a palm tree to call M down from his room. He strolled in, sat opposite her and waited for her to look up. Result: Absolute blank astonshment. Genius. Complete success. I scarpered pdq and left them to it.

JSL came round for Korean & beer at Dok Suni on 1st & 6th. We wandered around the East Village afterwards while he showed me local bars that weren't full of NYU students & Bridge & Tunnel: a hidden basement sake bar near St Marks and Angel's Share on 9th & 3rd, a fabulous and dark one room cocktail bar hidden through an anonymous door. I'm not sure what was more unexpected: walking up a staircase into a recreation of a Japanese street restaurant in an East Village building, or falling like Alice though a door in the restaurant into the bizarre & chic bar. We ended up back at The Bowery drinking bourbon & rum in the (packed) lobby bar. NB. BH is chocka with models and pretty people.

Today I'm off to Union Sq to buy music, Strand for books, and then The Frick for the El Grecos & Whistlers.

I wore: denim mini. black leggings, patent ballerines, DKNY black jacket, TSE cashmere sweater. Big silver hoops. Ponytail.

I am listening to: Kings of Leon

The Four Seasons

It's a whole different world up there in mid-town. JD's boyfriend's best friend F is a banker, in town for some mega mega deal. When the call came in to schlep up 51 blocks for after dinner drinks at The Four Seasons our enthusiasm levels were low. Eventually we dolled up, furs, legs & heels and trotted off to the hotel looking like two Russian call girls on the make. JD did look thoroughly fabulous.

Two English guys looked us up & down as we swept into the bar, and said knowingly, "Park Avenue". Genius. The four superannuated blondes at the bar, who really were on the make, were not best pleased at our arrival. Best line of the evening: Them to me: (after some sniping about my elbows in their space at the crowded bar) Looks like Camilla Parker Bowles Jr has arrived. F to them: Looks like Hillary Rodham Clinton Sr is already at the bar. Most pleased to spot some old school New Yorkers with wind tunnel plastic surgery, helmet hair and couture coming out of Atelier Joel Robuchon (the hotel restaurant).

We relocated to the lobby bar, away from the suits & the filles de joie, to snack on an "artisanal" cheese plate & Kobe hamburgers. Someone please tell them that their Camembert is not a goat cheese and that Kobe beef tastes so much better served hot not stone cold.

Joined by M, an investment guy on the deal. We ended up drinking a vastly overpriced bottle of Oregon Pinot in SoHo. Their expense account. M did flirting & asked me out for dinner tomorrow. Typical. My first date in NYC is with a British banker. (Although not my type, plus JD and his mate are coming along too, so should be fun.) Soho House is booked. (We can be the annoying braying English that AA Gill hates so much).

I wore: My black vintage mini dress again (ok I was hungover - sartorial decisions not high on priority list). Black patent low platform ankle strap stilettos with red soles. Black fur wrap. Black bakelite cuff. All Saints bubble patent bag.

Today I am listening to: 2 Many DJs mix

The Lafayette Hotel

The hottest - & most stealth hotel in NYC.

http://lafayettenyc.com/

From the guys behind Waverly et al. And round the corner from chez nous.