London, England – Reported by Elite Traveler, the private jet lifestyle magazine
Café Royal’s reopening as a luxury hotel heralds the return of an iconic London landmark that has continually evolved to define and capture the zeitgeist of the capital throughout its 150-year history.
Enviably located on 68 Regent Street, with prestigious Mayfair to the west and creative Soho to the east, Café Royal has always been the preferred haunt of the intellectual, political and artistic literati. Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw, Virginia Woolf Cary Grant, Elizabeth Taylor, Winston Churchill and Muhammad Ali were all patrons.
Over the past four years, David Chipperfield Architects has restored and transformed the grandeur of the old Café Royal restaurant into a contemporary, London-lifestyle hotel. It features 159 rooms and historic suites, an array of dining venues, a private-members club, high-tech meeting rooms and a holistic well-being spa and gym.
The hotel interiors seamlessly weave the old with the new to pay homage to the architectural heritage of the building. Historic rooms, such as the Grill and Domino rooms, sit alongside contemporary spaces decorated in muted hues creating a scene of serene ambience.
In each guest room, cast plaster and Carrera marble have been worked to create large rusticated wall panels that reflect the handsome Regent Street facades while the lightly-fumed oak floors and delicate copper-light doors complement existing historical details within the building. The suites encapsulate the essence of a pied-à-terre, bringing that old-world glamour back to life and giving guests all the comforts of home.
Café Royal is the second member of The Set, a new collection of luxury hotels created for the sophisticated and culturally savvy traveler.