In the cosmopolitan chaos of Soho is a designer oasis of calm, a city escape, a sophisticated hotel so confident and discreet that it doesn’t need its name on the door.
Once you’ve stepped in, mad Manhattan flows away – you won’t know why at first. Then you’ll start to notice the detail, the lighting, the furniture, the staff – all to the styling of one Andre Balaz, the prophet and pioneer of luxury hoteling.
We got to meet him briefly, whilst dining with the hotel’s GM. We were chowing down on the restaurant’s signature tuna wasabi pizza (it works, believe me) in the hotel lobby, a luxury only afforded to guests, when he wandered over, said a charming hello and then casually mentioned that the ‘lighting wasn’t bouncing off the table as it usually does’. Finickity, some might say – but testament to the hotel’s attention to detail. The rooms were spacious and minimal – I flowed and ebbed between loving its simplicity to wondering if it was lacking character, but eventually sided with the former. Like the rest of the hotel, you could see that a great detail of thought had gone into everything – the products in the bathroom, the discrete wardrobe, the positioning of furniture, all designed with a seriously sophisticated ‘metropolitanista’ in mind.
