Only two years after the Winter Olympic Games were held in London with a slew of related hotel debuts, England‘s capital city continues to roll out new lodging options. The latest is Rosewood London, a luxury property touting a hip twist on Edwardian style, complete with a spa and a bar stocked with some thousand antique books.
Open since autumn, the 306-room hotel on High Holbourn Road—an area once home to important historical figures like Charles Dickens, Sir Thomas More, and William Morris—is set near attractions like Drury Lane, Fleet Street, and Covent Garden. With nine suites and four room categories, each unit is comfortable yet chic, with an upholstered heather-grey desk chair (with matching bench and headboard), striped carpeting, top-notch Italian bedding, 46-inch TV, Nespresso coffee machine, and iPod docking station. Each bathroom comes trimmed with Italian marble, as well as a deep-soaking tub and a rain forest showerhead.
Scarfes Bar hosts a cocktail menu (plus 200 single malts), a thousand antique books, and velvet armchairs. Lunch and dinner menus are available, straddling Indian curries and European-inspired entrées along with bar snacks like fried lobster momos. The Mirror Room salon serves high tea each afternoon in an elegant space, along with pours from organic and biodynamic wineries.
Rosewood London’s eatery, the Holborn Dining Room (with a sister deli of the same name, also in the hotel), is set to open next month, showcasing a mix of traditional Brit fare (particularly under the menu’s "British Kitchen" section) and contemporary dishes. Menu items will be crafted from locally sourced foods and served in a space marked by chandeliers, antique mirrors, and furniture designed from reclaimed oak. Aged patina brass and copper atop Holborn’s bar and counter give the feeling of old-meets-new. In the deli, look for espresso drinks, pastries, local cheeses, ciders, and clotted cream and marmalades.
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Plus, pampering options exist at the Sense Spa, with seven treatment rooms, wooden walkways, and amethyst-crystal steam rooms.
Kristine Hansen is a freelance writer based in Milwaukee where she reports on food, wine, and travel topics around the globe for Fodors.com, along with new hotel openings. She also writes for Wine Enthusiast, TIME, Whole Living, and American Way. In 2006, she co-authored The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Coffee and Tea (Alpha Books/Penguin). You can follow her on Twitter @kristineahansen or through her web site.
Photo credit: Courtesy of Rosewood London