Words: Josh Lee
For a couple of generations now, The Peninsula – which has a storied pedigree that makes it part of Asia’s oldest string of hotels – has essentially been a second home for those of a particular pay band, originally admired for its squads of dutiful page boys in pillbox caps and worshipped nowadays for its armada of green Rolls-Royces out front and its vast expanses of space decorated with enough art to fill a decent size Gagosian. The sweep of in-room tech syncs you into the property’s wonderful matrix – The Peninsula, in many ways, is a pretty decent alternative to a GAFA headquarters – as do the staff who beam at you as if you are the only man on Earth; after a few nights here, you start to understand what it might be like to be Michael Jordan walking through Chicago.
The exterior of The Peninsula London, located just off Hyde Park Corner
It originally started in Hong Kong, around the time Steamboat Willie first appeared on screens and Calvin Coolidge still occupied the Oval Office, before fanning out to Manila, New York and Los Angeles, Beijing and Bangkok. In Tokyo, which opened in 2007, there are elevated views of a beautifully groomed patch of the Imperial Palace gardens; in Paris, travellers rush to the roof for the postcard shot of the Eiffel Tower. (I once witnessed a proposal there, much to the ire of every guy on his second or third date.)
The hotel entrance
And recently came London, in a behemoth new development off Hyde Park Corner – the city’s first stay to rack up a billion-pound development fee – with an eyeball-to-eyeball position opposite The Lanesborough hotel, and an almost entirely enclosed blueprint to make it feel as though nothing else exists outside the building’s graceful pleasures. The atrium at the centre of it all is high enough to host a Harlem Globetrotter’s exhibition and has the type of detailing – moulded ceilings, de Gournay landscape murals, tall pillars and big chandeliers – that might remind you of that time you toured the mansions of Bel-Air. The French toast at breakfast has the glassy bite of caramelised sugar that the best crème brûlées possess, and the poached eggs naturally come with the option to have a bit of osetra caviar spooned on top.
Grand Premier Park Room
The bedside control panel; for years, The Peninsula has been famed for its sweep of tech
A Premier Room bathroom
When the call of the room comes, the classic hallmarks of The Peninsula – what the travel mags call signature details – are all there, with bathrooms that are fitted with a sufficient amount of marble to deck out a Medici’s palazzo, and the valet box, a hidden drop-and-pickup cupboard for shoes needing to be shined and shirts yearning to be pressed, is just perfect for guests of an introverted nature. On the bedside, there are touchscreens that have you conduct the way the room operates (blinds, temperate regulation, alarm, channel of choice, a call for a 3am club sandwich). For the weary-eyed pummelled by a taxing week at the desk, the soaking tub, which can be fixed up with a sprinkle of bath salts, has a sort of meditative effect that scours out every inch of pain, muscle by muscle, limb by limb, sigh by sigh.
Brooklands by Claude Bosi
Claude Bosi – a chef who seems to be everywhere at once these days, splitting his time between his restaurant at the Michelin House; his Lyonnaise bistro, Josephine Bouchon; and Socca, his French-Mediterranean hybrid with Samyukta Nair – took over a chunk of the rooftop with his fine-diner, Brooklands, which practically custom-designed the area into an aeronautical and racing wonderland. (The space, rather curiously, nods to the Surrey racetrack of the same name, which has strong links to British motorsport, aviation, and Concorde; the entrance, as a result, is marked with a 1933 Napier Railton, and the elevator is a kind of hot-air-balloon simulation.)
The menu here is built around the British larder, filtered through an arsenal of French kitchen techniques. There could be Lake District lamb with mint and pastrami in summer; winter might see a dessert of Scottish cep with banana and crème fraîche. And you may have also heard of the intricacies of Canton Blue, where there are steamed baskets of prawn har gau, xiao long baos, and great barbecued-pork buns – the type of stuff that Hong Kong expats pine for during the dead of night.
The hotel pool, decorated with mosaics and natural-light simulations
And you just can’t leave without an hour or two in the basement pool, a colossal atrium that looks like a scene from a Roman bath, with its upper-walls of mosaics and natural-light simulations, all anchored around a 25-metre tract of pleasant blue water.
Sometimes, it may be occupied with the odd person or two. On other occasions, your suite of family members may disturb your time alone. But don’t worry – the sauna is a fine place in which to hide.
- The Peninsula London, 1 Grosvenor Place, SW1X 7HJ, peninsula.com
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