We are having a spectacular week. Our sojourn from home in French France to the heart of Chelsea and Mayfair in London, finds us arriving in Sloane Square. Sandwiched between Porsches, Range Rovers, Mercedes Benz, Teslas and BMWs, Brompton Road and Knightsbridge to the north and with The Sloane Club to the south, we are left breathless from the obviously overt opulence and evidently exceptional extravagance that is displayed so openly in this area as standard.
We are here in London to visit the Saatchi Gallery to see Gary Bunt’s latest collection.
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Staying for three nights at Sloane Place Hotel, we are on the third floor. From some, I’ve heard that being ensconced on the third floor of any hotel is the best floor to be on. For various reasons ranging from an anti-theft location, where burglars prefer the more easily raidable floors below, to it being accessible by regular firefighters ladders in the case of needing evacuation by that method. But for us, in an upgraded room, there are no complaints. Clean white linen for the sumptuous bed and a plethora of soft fluffy towels, Molton Brown toiletries on tap, room service clearly detailed and, should you not wish to brave the excellent restaurant on the ground floor, then a very reasonable ‘tray charge’ will have your comestibles whisked to your bedroom suite door for your delight and delectation.
On our first evening, sampling the offerings in the hotel’s restaurant, both Charlotte and I are surprised not only at the staff’s attentiveness to our needs but possibly and more importantly, the superb quality of the food. The menu offers a wide range of dishes that cater for many tastes as well as a differing soup and plat du jour. If our first night menu is repeated while we are in residence, I will have seconds!
That said, every plate, every dish exceeds expectations and that is an accolade we rarely witness in this line of exploration. Reviewing the quality of hotel accommodation or restaurant standards when travelling is always been one of those joys in life that usually leaves me ending up with more stories and anecdotes than any other subject matter field – and not always in a favourable light. Here though, Sloane Place Restaurant has our attention. Rapt attention.
In fact, on the evening of our arrival we are shown to a lovely table in the hotel restaurant and although asking for a bottle of Picpoul de Pinet Domaine Morin, Languedoc, we are presented with one from Domaine Belleview, Burgundy. A Rully 1er cru to be precise and, as I’m at that moment not wearing my new glasses, I just accept the bottle being offered without question. Following its opening and tasting however, it is obvious that this wine isn’t a £37.50 bottle from where the range starts at all. Hastily donning my glasses I inspect the bottle label and am unsurprised to see that it is one that comes from the other end of the list. £93.00 to be accurate! I quickly appraise the staff of the error and they magnanimously give it to us at the price of the lesser bottle. Happy days! It is a very nice wine! I can see another road trip for us to Burgundy coming in the future.
Any testament to an outstanding restaurant has to be that you want to try the next thing from the menu. Here at Sloane Place Hotel, our three days have not seen us stray from sampling their daily wares to any other establishment in this locale, or even further afield. It is so good as to ensnare our attention and captivate our palates to such an extent as to go elsewhere would be tantamount to cheating on your one true love. In this instance, we are totally faithful. Faithful to a fault which will probably mean severe bodily workouts will be de rigueur for the next few weeks when we return to French France.
So, as Charlotte is able to cram in some business meetings today and a business dinner tonight that will keep the wolf from the door for a few more weeks, I book a window seat for tonight’s solitary dinner. On my arrival at the restaurant however, I find my reservation placed in a corner near the entrance where the cold September wind is blowing in gay abandon, giving my knees the longing for warmer climes of home.
Disgruntled? I’ll be being generous if I limit myself to saying it doesn’t matter. But that’s what I hear myself saying! It doesn’t matter that my preferred seating position reservation has been overlooked for another punter. It doesn’t matter that I’m placed in a cold and breezy corner of the dining room. It doesn’t matter that now my view is of the front-of-house arrival desk and associated pillar rather than the wide and open space offered by the window seat. It doesn’t matter at all.
I’ll be British. I’ll be polite. I’ll be typically reserved in my brogues, ecru chinos, pale blue Ralph Loren shirt and dark blue Ted Baker jacket. I’ll be the debonair Englishman in London, a Sloane or Hooray Henry. I’ll accept the limitations of a fallible booking system that failed to give me exactly what I’ve requested (and been acquiesced to) and instead I’ll huddle in the lonely cold corner. ‘No one puts baby in the corner’. But I’m not a baby. So I’ll suffer in silence. I’ll be respectful and mild mannered and not make a scene or cause disruption to the staff and others enjoying their dinner engagements. I’ll write a blog for sure. Oh yes. This isn’t how one is accustomed to being treated. The world shall know.
Rant over, dinner is, as usual, superbe and I’m offered a glass of wine from the waitress as compensation for her not having properly secured for me my table of choice in the window. However, I note on completion of my main course that the window table has now been vacated. I quickly appraise the waitress of the sudden and unexpected availability and am rewarded with a subtle side shuffle to the original table of my choice. Rosana, the waitress, collects my napkin and water (I have yet to accept the free glass of wine following our first evening dinner debacle), placing them on a small silver serving tray, she moves me to the hastily cleaned and prepared table in the window from where I can now survey the whole restaurant as well as the street outside. A predominantly beautiful location to pass the evening in.
That of course has to be celebrated with a glass of wine. And a dessert. And another glass of wine.
And it is in these chance changes of circumstance that opportunities present themselves, as within moments I’m ensconced in conversation with patriots from our home country of French France extolling the virtues of French living, their welcome attitude to us and the Rugby World Cup!
An hour later and I’m concerned that my glass is almost dry and there are only a couple of other tables occupied. It is getting late and, as time marches inexorably on, I can safely say that following the shift to this favoured window location I am now totally and completely gruntled, as nothing is better than good food, good wine and excellent company in fine surroundings.
Sloane Place hotel is a quiet oasis from the noise and confusion that epitomises surrounding London. As the prospect of returning through the underground and overground rail system to Stansted Airport looms large on the horizon of our tomorrow, I can honestly say that if you are ever in a mind to visit this vibrant cosmopolitan city, Sloane Place Hotel should be high on your list of favoured places to stay.
We both return to French France with Covid! Carry on regardless…
DJ
Carry On Regardless 