A couple of giant elephants wearing magician's gear now burst from a tall building opposite The Blue Posts on Broadwick Street. These are not Christmas decorations, or an ad for a London Zoo x David Copperfield special, or even the arrival of the great god Ganesha on earth (actually it’s too early to say on this last one). No, they’re here to trumpet what must be the best new hotel in London.
The Broadwick is a riot of design decadence and atmospheric fun, leaning on Soho's history of dirty glamour; think The Rolling Stones just back home from Marrakech and popping into Raymond's Revue Bar.
Martin Brudnizki is the interiors guru and industry darling behind the good looks - the Annabel's designer who has also just cooked up Paris’ La Grand Mazarin and New York's Fifth Avenue - has outdone himself here. The 8-storey building is dazzling throughout, like walking through some odd concoction of a 70s disco and a 50s art brat gallery, only it's all taking place in the future.
The rooms
The guest rooms take this eclectic spirit and run with it, creating a visual feast that’s both quirky and luxurious. In the deluxe room my partner and I had, the flat screen was set in an ornate gold frame, the wardrobes hid behind a false wall behind the bed, and art deco furniture almost but not quite stole the show from a gold Elephant mini bar (hand crafted in India apparently).
It also scored bonus points for the hotel room bits I’m always most interested in: the kettle (a temperature controlled gooseneck number which fascinated me for far longer than it should have (“Would you like another tea? Because it is still maintaining just under boiling point.” “Shut up now.”)) the shower (massive G-force drenching power), bathroom products (Ortigia, which I'm told are good), snacks (beer nuts in the mini bar, plus free Gummi bears!), and thermostat (controlled, as with everything in the room, via an iPad).
Food & drink
To be perfectly honest, we had planned on having a quick cocktail at the bar, a meal at the restaurant Dear Jackie, before going out to hit Soho properly, but found that the Broadwick is simply impossible to leave. It's like a funky glass wormhole where time last forever inside and speeds by outside. Anyway, that's our excuse. We had pre-dinner cocktails at the rooftop bar, Flute, which is set to be a must for dedicated Soho cocktail fiends. With its animal print and onyx and mirrored walls and ceiling, is like stepping onto the set of The Stud, only the atmosphere is more about hushed intimacy than garish display. Keeping its cool amidst the ostentation is a trick the Broadwick revels in. The Old Fashioned I am always compelled to choose, as a white British male set solidly in the patriarchal edifice, was outrageously good. My partner's Cosmo equally good. I think. She didn't let me try it.
The room of the Dear Jackie restaurant, which was our next port of all, must also be one of the quirkiest around, all booths and sultry lighting with flashes of gold and red, and hard-crafted plates with pictures of bizarre acts. An Italian by Fellini, basically. The Rabbit Pappardelle was a good, luscious choice but we were on a bit of a cocktail tip by that point so the best moment came with a martini and Dark Chocolate Mousse Bar desert which was some kind of personal peak.
The evening continued along these lines in The Nook, which is a small room for hotel guests just off the ground-level Bar Jackie. The Nook is where the disco chic turns into an Agatha Christie drawing room, all pre-murder tension and gossip. A million margaritas helped make sense of it all (please drink responsibly). My partner and I sat by the fire and listened to vinyl records and tried to think of how we could lie our way into bagging an extra night. No matter which way we played it out, we couldn’t quite deny the fact we had to get back to our children the next day and just letting them roam the street, while an option that deserved a few scenario play-throughs, was deemed not quite right, on this occasion.
The sleep and the breakfast
All the best hotel stays end with a cup of tea in a massive bed watching Keanu Reeves kill something on the TV. And so it proved.
Sleep happened at some stage. The restless sleep of the spoiled. Upon waking, we had breakfast in the room, to treat ourselves, as if we hadn't been treated enough, the children that we are.
And then we left practically kissing the feet of every staff member on our way out. Lovely bunch of people, lovely hotel, ditch all your old go-to's and head there instead. What a lovely escape into another life.
