Next time you go to London, do yourself a favor and stay at The Beaumont Mayfair, London.
The hotel occupies a gleaming white Art Deco building that was formerly an Avis Car Rental garage. Avis, whose motto at the time was “We Try Harder,” clearly didn’t try hard enough – and I speak from many sub-par experiences at that very outlet. Its number up, the first-floor office and parking garage floors above it were gutted, an entire marble quarry (so it seems) was imported from Italy, designer du jour Thierry Despont set to work on the decoration and London’s newest “grand hotel” was born.
All of this was but a mere 10 years ago, and it only goes to show how seriously the owners take the maintenance of the property, since The Beaumont has just emerged resplendent from a three-year renovation. It has added 29 new guest rooms and suites, bringing the total key count to 101, as well as two new private dining rooms.
Of course, refurbs, additional guest rooms and private dining rooms are not of themselves inducements to stay at The Beaumont. But there are plenty of other reasons why you should. First, if not foremost, is that The Beaumont has a distinctly American vibe, which coupled with a ritzy Mayfair location and a great wodge of English history and tradition is a match made in hotel heaven.
The Beaumont is also just a few yards from Grosvenor Square, with its sculptures of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Dwight D. Eisenhower, where London’s 9/11 memorial also stands and where, until its recent move south of the River Thames, the iconic American Embassy once stood. And here’s a fun fact: The Beaumont’s original architects, Wimperis and Simpson, also designed Winfield House, the neo-Georgian townhouse in London’s Regent’s Park, commissioned by Woolworth heiress Barbara Hutton in 1936 and donated to the United States by her after the war, to serve as the U.S. ambassador’s residence – which, by the way, it still is.
But what of the hotel itself, you ask, and what are the real reasons for staying there?
Let me count the ways. First, there’s the top-hatted doorman’s greeting, proffered as if you were the only guest in the world. And the concierge desk – staffed by proper, old-fashioned, concierges, who proudly wear crossed keys on their lapels, indicating their top-tier professionalism. These gentlemen and women are such fonts of knowledge they could probably recite great chunks of the “Encyclopedia Britannica” as well as this week’s edition of “Time Out” backwards in their sleep. No question of Googling, because these guys (although, this being London, no one ever calls them “guys”) know everything without having to tap away peskily on a keyboard. Seats for the incomparable Erin Morley at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, tonight? Or the Deep Purple concert at the O2 Arena tomorrow? “Of course, sir,” comes the answer. “Allow me to have the tickets sent up to your room.” The next Eurostar to Paris? “That will be at 5:10 p.m. Two first-class tickets? Absolutely, madam.” Oh, the bliss.
Bliss at a price, it goes without saying, but still. Ask and ye shall receive.
If you like lobby life, you’ll love The Beaumont. A line of deeply comfortable sofas looks toward the revolving front door, domain of the aforementioned doorman, so you see a jolly slice of London and international life coming and going. And Le Magritte Bar attracts a very “London” crowd, part-business, certainly, but part-arty and Bohemian, too. At any rate, it’s a great mix – just like the bull-shots and old fashioneds the white-jacketed bartender seems to have so much fun preparing. People and drinks at their scintillating best, you could say. Even the mocktails – one of my least favorite words, I must admit – seem to shimmer.
Glamour is still alive and actively kicking at The Beaumont, where the Anglo-American modern Art Deco design could have come straight out of a 1930s Park Avenue apartment, or the set of a Noel Coward play. (Cole Porter, are you there?) If only smoking were allowed, you’d be smoking Sobranie Black Russians through a long cigarette holder at The Beaumont. Oops, my bad – I’d quite forgotten. Smoking is allowed, on the very lovely new cigar terrace in front of the hotel, although most folks out here are lighting up a Romeo y Julieta Linea de Oro Hidalgo or a Montecristo classic.
Up in your guest room or suite, you’ll find linens and bedsheets so smooth and crisp I’d defy you to find a wrinkle. In the dressing area, you can practically see your reflection in heavy, polished mahogany hangers and in the bathroom, the tablets of soap are the size of building bricks. And no, our Vice President Kamala Harris has not gotten into toiletries as a sideline – the “Harris” soap, shampoo and assorted unguents are in fact by D. R. Harris, the English perfumers founded in 1790, whose original store is close by The Beaumont in the tony neighboring district of St. James’s.
There are more treats in store, like books a-plenty on the bookshelves (biographies of everyone who’s ever been anyone, from those Benjamins – Franklin and Disraeli – to Sting) and beautiful new boxes of Beaumont-emblazoned playing cards. You can take those home with you – but not, I suspect, the beautiful leather dice shakers with their two sets of ivory dice. I exercised maximum restraint, I can tell you, in leaving those behind.
No such restraint at dinner in the hotel’s Colony Grill, where for an elegant grill-room supper you might follow a plate of mild, “London cure”-smoked salmon with beef Wellington or cider- battered haddock with peas and caviar tartare sauce. That’s a posh version of fish and chips, in case you were wondering.
And no restraint either at breakfast, where the hotel does a tremendous salt beef (that’s what the English call corned beef) hash. And just when you thought there was nothing more anybody could possibly do to doll up an avocado, the clever Beaumont kitchen presents a hearty breakfast dish of mashed avocado on a sweet corn fritter, topped with a fried duck egg. Delicious, super-filling and, you guessed – no need for lunch.
A final thought on the hotel’s exceptional location. Situated just steps away from Selfridge’s, London’s great department store (founded, incidentally, by the American Gordon Selfridge), The Beaumont faces an elevated outdoor garden, with an extraordinarily lovely domed structure at the far end. In reality it is an electricity substation built at the end of the 19th century, but the story persists that it was indeed constructed to house Queen Victoria’s pet elephant, a gift to her from the King of Abyssinia. A myth, perhaps, but one I choose to believe. Because, well, only in London, right?
And only at The Beaumont – of course, right.
Jeremy Wayne is a travel adviser with Superior Travel of New York. Contact him directly with your travel questions and needs at jeremy@superiortravel.com.
