The Peninsula London – Hotel Review
The illustrious hotel brand makes its glittering debut in the English capital.
It’s the light you notice first. Slipping into The Peninsula London’s commanding, tripleheight lobby from the mayhem of Hyde Park Corner is like finding a calm and luminous sanctuary in the heart of the metropolis. The space channels the glamour of the group’s iconic original at The Peninsula Hong Kong, yet is distinctly London in both the handpainted de Gournay wallpapers depicting Hyde Park scenes and the afternoon tea service of coronation chicken sandwiches and scones with clotted Dorset cream.
Buckingham Palace is next door and the royal parks and ritzy boutiques of Knightsbridge are nearby. Stay in an eastfacing room where tripled-glazed bay windows survey Hyde Park and the palace gardens, the city unspooling like a silent film on the bustling streets below. All 190 rooms (with a minimum of 51 square metres) feature honey onyx bathrooms, custom Frette linens and commissioned landscapes by artists from the Royal Drawing School.
The Peninsula London has been 35 years in the planning by parent company The Hongkong and Shanghai Hotels and it shows. Nowhere more so than in the spectacular dining venues, Brooklands and Canton Blue. The former is a paean to chairman Sir Michael Kadoorie’s passion for motorsports and aviation, its walls clad in fuselage aluminium and the ceiling hung with a scale model of an aeroplane. Every detail is exact. Chef director Claude Bosi’s (ex Hibiscus and Bibendum) mod-Brit menu at the rooftop eatery runs to Exmoor caviar and Racan guinea fowl with Scottish razor clams. Both the restaurant and bar (and the 200-cigar humidor and tasting lounge) share a broad, sprawling terrace with lordly views from St Paul’s to Battersea.
Canton Blue is the haute Cantonese restaurant and tea-room of colourful porcelains and antique instruments where executive chef Dicky To (formerly at The Peninsula Tokyo and Paris) prepares classic dim sum and the signature Peking duck.
“We’re a heritage brand… synonymous with luxury service,” says Sonja Vodusek, the hotel’s Australian-born MD. “We want to honour our Asian heritage but we also really want to embrace all things British.”
