Soho is having a renaissance – and this new hotel is the best place to stay
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The novelty of the Elizabeth Line hasn’t worn off for me. Google Maps still frequently denies it exists, suggesting I shell out on the Heathrow Express, but I’m Team Liz all the way to T5. The line has also reinvigorated Soho and connected it physically as well as spiritually to east London, where I live. I can get from Mr Fogg’s Gin Club on Chapel Street to dinner at St John in seven minutes.
Soho has, of course, changed. I’m a fan of Mr Fogg, but I preferred it when it was the queerer Star at Night, and I detest what’s become of Berwick Street and the once so cinematic and seedy, now sanitised, Walker’s Court. Still, there’s always something new to compensate. And the latest thing is the Broadwick Soho, a Martin Brudnizki-designed, mega-camp, beautiful boutique hotel, at which I had such fun on a Monday night, I had to take all of Tuesday off. Which is surely the point of Soho.
From the outside, there are few clues as to just how opulent the Broadwick Soho is. There’s a fabulously overdressed doorman, and currently two giant elephants on the façade, decked out with Christmas baubles. Looking in through the window at the unremarkable all-day dining counters of Bar Jackie, all looks fairly vanilla. Dear Jackie downstairs – an Italian restaurant with good rabbit ragu, fish dishes, and a classic veal chop – is a different story. It is vivid red, with giddy floral upholstery and red and white striped wall sconce lamps that look like delicious, boiled sweets. There are dimmed chandeliers, with a mix of red and blue bulbs. Visually, it’s jam on jam, and has quickly illuminated a fairly swish scene.
When I had dinner, Stephen Fry was at a nearby table, while I eavesdropped on a first date crashing in slow motion on the other side of me. “I found fame really hard to deal with,” said the non-descript man who I didn’t recognise. “I just need you to know about that, if this goes beyond a first date.” I doubt there was a second. If he was lucky enough to be staying over for breakfast, he would have been given a menu featuring the standard eggs Benedict and avocado on toast, but with a cute Italianate arrangement of cream-filled bomboloni on the counter. A spritely start to the day.
I wonder how much the upkeep of Broadwick Soho is going to cost. Not for the gorgeous woody “Dame of Soho” fragrance that Azzi Glasser has concocted exclusively for the rooms, but more because of all the Murano glass mirrors there are in the lifts and bedrooms, and all the drunk people that might stumble into them. There’s a plush and calm residents’ lounge bar – The Nook – hidden away behind the ground-floor bar, but the focus of the action is Flute, on the roof, which really should be open until 4am, but because this is Westminster, kicking-out time is half-past midnight at weekends.
Stretching the whole length of the building, this is where Brudnizki’s star talent really shines, with wild patterns, a mirrored hexagonal tile ceiling, deco silhouettes, and lots of coral textiles. There are classic cocktails with gentle twists (miso butter in the Manhattan), but spiritually this is pure Porn Star Martini territory. There are nibbles too, but kitchen please note: a samosa is not a gyoza.
The only thing I am really taking a point off for at the Broadwick is the cod Baroque frames around the TV sets in the bedrooms. They look like Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen broke in and added a few changes after Martin Brudnizki had signed off; horribly ’90s wine bar. Not the vibe.
Everything else about the bedrooms is impressive. They aren’t for minimalists, but they’re definitely sexy. There’s a lot of velvet, the beds are big and squishy, with crisp white cotton covers, and the bathrooms are marble, bright, and stuffed with fancy Ortigia products (I had a tough conversation with myself along the lines of “no, if the handwash is in glass, you can’t take it”). While midnight might be last orders upstairs, these are the sorts of rooms you can imagine recklessly emptying the ornate Elephant-shaped minibars in, while staring Rear Window-style into the tiny living rooms of the few people lucky enough to still live in W1.
I’ve always had a fantasy of joining them, here in the middle of the city. Maybe more in the ’80s and ’90s, and perhaps even then it was the ’50s and ’60s I would have preferred. But then it’s always easy to be in love with nostalgia for something you didn’t even experience. Yes, Soho feels too clean today, but it’s still somewhere to cause havoc, in between multi-coloured LED tuk-tuk rides soundtracked by Kylie’s latest banger. And still somewhere to wake up knowing you’ve written off a weekday, in style.
Essentials
Doubles at Broadwick Soho (020 7047 4000; broadwicksoho.com) from £595, including breakfast. There are six accessible rooms.
