Hotel Hit Squad: The Bulgari Hotel London has upped its game with a new restaurant based on a New York favourite
It is a marvel to me that many New Yorkers think their city has better food than London. I spend four months a year across the pond and am continually exasperated by their saccharine, dairy-free dressings and my regular bouts of food poisoning. I once had to move into my bathroom for 24 hours after an incident involving razor clams, and last summer I encountered a bug so pernicious that it gave me liver damage. There is, of course, truly great dining in New York City. Eleven Madison Park is a treasure, and I can’t wait for chef Daniel Humm to open its cousin at Claridge’s in London.
But generally, NyLon transplants don’t fare well. Balthazar was fun for five minutes in Covent Garden, but the promise of fried chicken and live music makes Red Rooster in Shoreditch a no-go for me. Scarpetta is a NoMad neighbourhood staple that recently came to the Bulgari in Knightsbridge in the shape of sibling Sette. I was at the Manhattan mothership a couple of weeks before visiting the London arriviste, and it is – as it always has been – a sort of American Psycho Dorsia throng of businessmen, gloss and quirky negronis, with everyone fawning over the most blogged dish: a $24 (￡19) pile of prosaic basil and tomato spaghetti that arrives beneath a glass cloche. It is Florentine trattoria quality, which in New York is celestial praise.
I never visited Alain Ducasse’s Rivea, the previous restaurant at the Bulgari Hotel London. I don’t know anyone who did. Its replacement should do well. The basement bar is bo?te-like and lovely, while the upstairs dining room bathes that aforementioned spaghetti dish, as well as a fantastic duck and foie gras ravioli, in the kind of light that makes everyone looks comely, nay filtered.
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Sette couldn’t be more on-message with the Bulgari. The hotel is a luxed-up Italianate experience for people who wear white nubuck driving shoes without socks all summer. It’s what I’d call 'Italian modern' – by and large an oxymoron. Milan may be the centre of the universe in terms of showcasing contemporary design, but there is a tendency the length and breadth of the country to over-egg the pudding of every modish interior with outlandish materials and Hanna-Barbera-on-acid lighting fixtures.
Designer Antonio Citterio has articulated something special and different for the Bulgari, with an overall look that’s luxurious and expensive – lots of stained oak, silver and glossed mahogany – but that never tips over into bling. I stayed in one of the many suites – Bulgari I (from ￡12,000 per night) – which is impressive, indeed. It has a vast living room with a gargantuan custom-made sofa and a giant television that I thought wasn’t working, but which was actually hidden behind a sliding black panel.
It has an office and kitchen, a behemoth of a bedroom and a bathroom with steam room. Apart from a curious lack of phones where I would have liked them, and the fact that the lights in the lounge never actually turn off (minus eco points), I couldn’t fault the experience. Sure, it’s a little rich for my modernist tastes but like everything else at the Bulgari, from the service to the fragrances pumped out around the corridors, it is exquisite.
As well as having dinner at Sette, I had supper with a friend in my suite one night, and was impressed by everything, from quality and flavour (particularly the prawn dumplings, which I had again for breakfast) to generous portion size and pricing. I ordered a burger from room service at the Dolder Grand in Zurich a few years ago and was sent what I can only describe as a slider, for ￡45. I shudder to think what that costs today in Brexit-era sterling. The Bulgari hotel – where a giant plate of smoked salmon with soda bread clocks in at ￡21 – offers bargains in comparison.
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I get the feeling that the Bulgari hotel is a place where nothing bad could ever happen. It has the most beautiful private screening room in London, and the fitness club is as snazzy as it is well equipped: the space-age green strip lighting around the hallways offers a visual dialogue with the huge swimming pool, which glows emerald.
I spent a whole day there, leaving only for a 90-minute ￡350 Signature Energy Facial that rendered my customary resting-cynic face looking profoundly bright, alert and clean. It was the sort of expression I might wear permanently if my life involved little more than rolling around on the rug of a suite in Knightsbridge wearing nothing but a beautiful, voluminous grey linen robe, full of duck and foie gras ravioli.
Rooms from ￡660 per night, not including breakfast.
Read the full hotel review: Bulgari Hotel London