Categories
Architects Architecture Art Design Developers Hotels Luxury People Restaurants Town Houses

Boutique Hotel Awards + Sun Street Hotel Shoreditch London

It Rises Again

The Boutique Hotel Awards are the first and only organisation exclusively dedicated to recognising unique excellence in boutique hotels. All entrants are personally evaluated by independent and experienced judges.

Last year’s winners were selected from over 300 nominations across 70 countries. There are 15 international categories including World’s Best New Hotel (The Carlin Boutique Hotel in Queenstown, New Zealand); World’s Best Design Hotel (Akademie Street Boutique Hotel in Franschhoek, South Africa); World’s Best Chic Hotel (Hotel TwentySeven in Amsterdam, Netherlands); World’s Best Honeymoon Hotel (Drake Bay Getaway Resort in Osa Peninsula, Costa Rica); World’s Best Beach Hotel (Velaa Private Island in the Maldives); World’s Best Family Hotel (Rockfig Lodge Madikwe Game Reserve in Madikwe, South Africa); and the top prize World’s Best Boutique Hotel (San Ysidro Ranch in Santa Barbara, California).

There was only one international category winner in Britain last year: Sun Street Hotel in London was awarded World’s Best City Hotel. The judging panel recorded, “Head Chef Stuart Kivi-Cauldwell’s salmon comes from the oldest smokehouse in London, his wagyu from chocolate fed cows in Ireland, and his catch of the day from the best boat that’s just come in.”

Stuart has created a modern British cuisine menu complemented by an extensive wine list. Dinner highlights include chalk stream trout and black truffle and burrata tortellini. Food and drink are served in the Orangery and adjoining 40 cover restaurant opening onto the courtyard as well as a suite of reception rooms facing Sun Street. There’s also the welcome glass of Marlin Spike blended aged rum served in the entrance hall.

Designers Bowler James Brindley have used a rich palette of period hues – aubergine, olive and teal – accompanied by lively wallpapers as a backdrop to luxuriously comfortable interiors. And the best velvet cushions and lozenge-shaped poufs in town. Vincent Cartwright Vickers’ birds from The Google Book and water and earth zodiac signs are just some of the decorative themes. There are 41 bedrooms including seven suites. Every bedroom has a king size bed with Oxford pillows, an Illy coffee machine, Penhaligon’s Quercus range bathroom goodies, and twice daily maid service.

General Manager Jake Greenall, formerly of Beaverbrook, a luxury country house hotel in Surrey, says, “Sun Street is a hotel with a heartbeat, a place where guests are treated like part of the family, not just a room number. It’s a home away from home for our guests, with the added benefits that a luxury five star hotel can bring.”

The hotel fills six Georgian brick terraced houses designed by George Dance the Younger at the turn of the 19th century and is part of the development One Crown Place. This revival of a full urban block includes the hotel, The Flying Horse pub, Wilson Street Chapel, a new office building and two multi-use prismatic towers (28 and 33 storeys respectively) designed by Kohn Pedersen Fox.

George Dance the Younger succeeded his father as supervisor of planning and building in the City of London upon George Dance the Elder’s death in 1768. He excelled at a streamlined neoclassicism; his most famous pupil Sir John Soane would be even more radical in his interpretative and idiosyncratic use of the classical orders. The Flying Horse pub is slightly newer that the abutting terrace: it was built in 1812 and remodelled 53 years later. The ground floor pub is a large squarish space with dark panelled walls.

A plaque on the façade of Wilson Street Chapel states, “Erected Anno Domini MDCCCLXXXIX,” and confirms Jesse Chessum and Sons as builders and Hodson and Whitehead as architects. A sign next to the plaque reads, “We preach not ourselves but Christ Jesus the Lord, II Corinthians 4:5.”

New York City architectural practice Kohn Pedersen Fox has designed major international urban schemes including Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles, California; Abu Dhabi Airport in United Arab Emirates; and Dongdaegu Transportation Hub in South Korea.

Aiman Hussein, Director of MTD Group who delivered One Crown Place, comments, “We are thrilled to have Sun Street Hotel at One Crown Place. Led by the esteemed Bespoke Hotels team, it forms a key ingredient for making One Crown Place a desirable destination where the City of London and Shoreditch come together.”

This year, the Boutique Hotel Awards are revealing their favourite picks in a new book The Ultimate Collection of Boutique Hotels celebrating 13 years sampling the best boutique hotels in the world. The publication features the best international boutique properties from luxury villas to regal chateaux to far flung islands. The front cover star is Isla Sa Ferradura in San Miguel, Ibiza. It will be an essential coffee table and reference book for all avowed luxury travellers.

Categories
Hotels Luxury People Restaurants

Boutique Hotel Awards 2018 +

The First Resort | Going Places

Liverpool Street Skyscrapers © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

With Platinum Sponsors as prestigious and diverse as Blacklane (chauffeurs to take you places) via Visoanska (beauty products to get you looking hot) to My Private Villas (destinations of desire) it’s sure to be a grand affair. Partners range from the highest level comms CNN and Milbanke Media to consumables like Doisy + Dam chocolates and Boursot French wine to cruises from Hapag Lloyd. Beach bod readiness is possible thanks to Tidal and Sand Dollar swimwear not forgetting Gassan diamonds. Baobab Collection (luxury homeware) and The Thinking Traveller (more desirable villas) illuminate the exquisite elixir of culture. Longings and belongings. To quote the composer Sir John Tavener, “See everything with the eye of the heart.”

The Boutique Hotel Awards wear their art on their sleeve: the best of the best internationally. There’s the stampede of fashionable feet as 250 leading luxury boutique hotel professionals and influencers from 112 countries around the globe take their seats. The setting: the glorious Merchant Taylors’ Hall in the City of London has been around since 1347 although the bones of the current building date from just after the Great Fire of 1666. It’s a fabulous Tudory Elizabethanist Medievalish fanfare shifting between major and minor modes, to paraphrase the composer Samuel Barber.

The Awards are now in their eighth year and are the only organisation in hospitality where every hotel and villa is actually visited by an experienced hotel judge and specialist in a particular category. The winners are selected from over 300 nominees. Guest experience is examined from six angles: Dining + Entertainment | Design | Facilities | Location | Staff Service | Overall Emotional Impact.

“The Boutique Hotel Awards 2018 Ceremony is an exciting and invigorating night,” enthuses Bianca Revens, Managing Director. “I am so proud to be a part of an organisation that recognises the passion and hard work of our winners and nominees, creating outstanding, unique luxury hotels and villas. Congratulations to everyone involved!” Keynote speaker Robin Sheppard, Cofounder and Chairman of Bespoke Hotels, calls the Awards “star studded” and “an essential date in the world’s perpetual calendar”. He adds, “We see the attention to detail in every stitch of fabric and every morsel of food.” Awarta Nusa Dua Resort + Villas in Bali, Indonesia, achieves a double whammy: top overall prize and World’s Best Culinary Experience. The other international winners are:

A jazzy string trio strikes up in the conservatory. The party has begun. A celebration of pure wanderlust joy is underway. “It’s a wonderful job being a hotelier!” exclaims Heidi Belnap who with her brother Aaron Hunsaker and his wife opened The Harkness in Idaho. “There are only about 850 people in our town. But we’re on the freeway to Yellowstone National Park and just two hours away from Salt Lake City. We restored a 1906 building that was close to being condemned. People are just falling in love with the hotel. It’s just different for that part of the world. It’s very boutique.” Michael S Howard extols the virtues of Thailand. He should know. Michael is Managing Director of Rasa Hospitality, a Bangkok based ground that manages top end resorts and hotels in Thailand. “Our conversation is the highlight of the evening.”

Dinner is served. Starter: salad of Devonshire white crabmeat, lemon and ginger cured Scottish salmon with asparagus and crème fraîche. Main: baked aubergine parmigiana with rainbow chard, toasted almond and French bean salad. Pudding: poached fig in port sauce with mango brûlée and blackcurrant délice. Demitasse and truffles. There’s simply no better way to celebrate the halfway point between the Autumn Equinox and the Winter Solstice. Sandwiched by a Richard Dhondt Champagne reception and carriage wine from D Vine, to alter the context of a quote from the composer Sir Hamilton Harty, The Boutique Hotel Awards are “better by two bars*”.

*Samuel Henshall, an 18th century Curate of nearby Christ Church Spitalfields, invented the corkscrew

Categories
Fashion Luxury People

Boutique Hotel Awards 2018 + Elisabeth Visoanska

Carpe Diem 

“Without the connection you have nothing. It’s the people that really make the experience.” The impossibly beautiful Elisabeth Visoanska.

Categories
Architects Architecture Art Country Houses Design Developers Fashion Hotels Luxury People Restaurants Town Houses

Boutique Hotel Awards 2018 + Lavender’s Blue

Quite Simply The Universe’s Most Glamorous Hospitality Awards Gala Dinner 

How the great poses? “We do it all the time!”