Nomad London Hotel

| Review |

NoMad London

| BY ADAM JACOT DE BOINOD

You can’t miss it! It’s bang opposite The Royal Opera House, one of London’s most iconic sites, and it complements it perfectly in both its beauty and construct. For this is Europe’s first NoMad hotel (www.thenomadhotel.com) with rooms from £455, which opened to great acclaim in the spring of 2021.

It’s in a great location not just for opera and ballet buffs but for London’s theatregoers generally and for shoppers it’s ideally close to all the boutiques of Covent Garden with its Market and Piazza. From the outside it has all the Portland-stone and Neo-Classical façade you might associate with its former role as one of the city’s top magistrate’s courts but on entry I became instantly immersed in a dark, moody private club.

The lobby has a central chandelier like a massive cone-shaped diamond and a goldleaf panelled reception desk. Throughout is a healthy mix of modern and traditional artwork and I loved the broad balcony rails from which to peer down upon the restaurant below. The textures are velvets and leathers, marble and dark wood and it has an intimate luxury boutique feel with a dramatic twist in keeping with its theatrical vicinity and historic function.

The hotel is home to the Bow Street Police Museum with it former cells and on the other side are private rooms used for events with their numerous stunning chandeliers and other glass foliage lighting. Here transformed with cloud murals is the historic Magistrates’ Court where British celebrities Oscar Wilde, Emmeline Pankhurst, Vivienne Westwood, John Gielgud and the Kray Twins were tried. There’s a wonderful three-room library exclusively for guests to sit in their leather chairs and enjoy its own bar and snacks amongst the low-lit well-stocked wooden bookshelves arranged into subjects that include theatre, dance and opera and the cities New York and London. A refreshingly true place of reading as opposed to the usual coffee-table book scenario and confident enough to include paperbacks.

I entered my room with a sense of excitement as the eclectic artwork and décor made me want to touch and explore further. From mine (the Magistrates’ Suite) I was lucky enough to look directly across at the Grecian magnificence of the Royal Opera House. My room had a parquet floor with which all of the ninety-one rooms are individually decorated as well as the Italian features of a decorative fireplace and Murano chandeliers. There was also an old-fashioned telephone and a lacquered console acting as a minibar beside a bold picture displaying the ‘intuitional movement’ of artist Caroline Denervaud whose work is commissioned throughout the hotel. My small marble bathroom with its gold basin sparkled from its mosaic tiles and there was the added luxury of a warm Toto loo-seat.

Down the twisting staircase I descended into the hotel’s centerpiece: the NoMad Restaurant (aka The Atrium). It resembles a Moroccan riad with two tiers of columns giving this immense room its style, space and character. Indeed the layout is truly multi-cultured with large lanterns part-Japanese, part-Moroccan housed under a vast greenhouse roof. At night it’s dark enough to hide the color scheme allowing a whole new ambiance and experience at breakfast. For, drenched in light and aided by the reflecting mirrors, its two central rows of chartreuse banquettes across the marble tables from the pink-cushioned chairs came into full bloom referencing respectively the dripping, draping plants and the building’s brickwork. There’s both a wonderful elliptically-shaped, pre-prandial bar and even ‘The Fireplace’, a snug enclave with a gorgeous central marble table and enveloped in ornate hand-made wallpaper.

Here I tucked into some delicious caviar with griddled potato bread, some baby artichokes fried with mint and pistachio, followed by my Cornish sea bass served whole with sesame, cucumber salad and padron peppers. I added some Maitake mushrooms (meaning dancing mushroom in Japanese) grilled with Calabrian chilli and horseradish, some carrots, smoked with Greek yogurt and Vadouvan spices and some potato rösti (that originate from Switzerland) that came with aioli and pecorino cheese.

As for the part-diner, part-bar called Side Hustle there’s a lively, buzzy vibe serving Mexican food and mezcal cocktails amongst a modern mix of urban art on the walls. There’s also a den-like basement bar called Common Decency that opens WedSat 6pm-12am.

The smiling, joyful staff are smart-casually and it’s a hotel clearly aimed at adults of every persuasion: the theatregoer, the shopper … even the nomad!