Monthly Archives: January 2011

Valentine’s Day Treats

Posted by Bon Vivant

Here are Bon Vivant‘s top picks to enjoy Valentine’s Day with your loved one(s) in London.

Ethical roses from OnlyRoses

If in search of the perfect rose on Valentine’s day, look no further than specialists OnlyRoses, whose roses are grown in the fertile volcanic soils of the Andes in Ecuador.

OnlyRoses works exclusively with four Ecuadorian rose farms certiﬁed to meet the highest social, labour and environmental standards. The indigenous workforce is free from labour discrimination and all staff are provided with healthcare and clothing, and no toxic chemicals are used in the growing of the roses. These roses aren’t just pretty – they’re highly principled, too.

Bon Vivant’s members receive a discount of 20% on purchases from OnlyRoses.

Dinner and Massage from Extravaganza Food

Indulge in a Valentine’s dinner for two cooked by your very own personal chef at home. For those who would like to make their Valentine’s celebration extra special, Extravaganza Food will prepare, cook and serve a four-course luxury dinner for two by an executive chef in your home. For the ultimate pampering experience, Extravaganza Food will also bring a massage therapist who will give you both a 45-minute massage whilst food is being prepared.

This is available throughout February at any London address and for Bon Vivant’s members they will include fresh flowers, a box of handmade chocolates and a complimentary bottle of fine champagne.

Bespoke Perfume

Spend a day with Miller Harris‘s perfumer, going through the scented library to find the perfect fragrance, which will be presented in a personalised engraved bottle, which can also be made into Miller Harris body care products and candles.

Sparkling Wine & Chocolate Gift Box

An elegant red and silver presentation box containing a superb Sparkling Rosé Crémant de Limoux & 10 silver and red foiled milk chocolate hearts for only £20 with free delivery within the M25. Click here to purchase and enter the code ‘VALENTINE” at checkout.

The Old Faithful – A Romantic Restaurant

Our earlier post on romantic restaurants mentioned that on Valentine’s Day, many restaurants tread on the wrong side of the precarious line between romantic and clichéd. However, some restaurants do get it just right, and a Valentine’s dinner remains the best way for many couples to share the love. Bon Vivant’s top picks for Valentine’s Day can be found here on our list of London’s most romantic restaurants.

End The Night in Style

London has some of the best city hotels in the world, from the grande dame glamour of Claridge’s to the boutique charm of the Covent Garden hotel, but how often do Londoners spend the night in these hotels? Valentine’s day is the perfect excuse to check in to one of these great hotels for the night.

If you would like for us to arrange any of these gifts or to create a wonderfully romantic break for your loved one, please contact us.

How To Get an Upgrade at a Hotel

Posted by Bon Vivant

People often ask the question of how to get an upgrade at a hotel? There’s no better way to start a holiday than with a free upgrade at your hotel.

The most important rule to remember is to be polite and well-mannered at all times – from the initial enquiry through to the reservation and when you arrive at the hotel.

However, sometimes you need more than manners to get you through – here are some tips to help you to get an upgrade and secure that penthouse.

Timing – The best way to get an upgrade it to check in later, between 4-6PM, as the front desk can see the cancellations and no-shows for that day.

Also, if your dates are flexible, don’t book on busy holiday times, as upgrades cannot be given if the hotel is at full occupancy.

Book a room in the middle price range – It’s not impossible to get upgraded when booking the cheapest room category available, but it doesn’t help your odds. Book a room that’s in the mid range for a better chance to get an upgrade.

Be nice – It’s that simple. Front desk staff and hotel managers deal with a lot of people and handle a lot of problems and stress during their day. Sometimes, just being personable and friendly can go a long way to help you get an upgrade.

Ask – It doesn’t hurt to ask, and the worst thing that can happen is that you get declined. If it’s a special occasion, it doesn’t hurt to mention that either.

Book for One Night - If you book for a week and you get a free upgrade, the hotel could lose money if they sell all their rooms as they could have sold your higher priced room instead.

If you book for one night, you increase your chances of getting an upgrade because it’s a lot easier for the front desk to determine the occupancy rate for the night.

Keep reading for tips on how to get an upgrade at a hotel…

Hotel mistake? Sometimes a hotel’s mistake can work to your advantage. Perhaps your room wasn’t ready upon check-in or construction is causing loss of sleep – you can always address an issue with the management in a nice manner and see if they will do something (like provide an upgrade) for the inconvenience.

It’s all about relationships, baby – When it comes to the question of how to get an upgrade, who you know matters, and even more so if it happens to be the general manager at the hotel you’re staying at.

Don’t have a connection? Don’t worry. Booking through a concierge service will help as we will have relationships with hotels all over the world to help you out.

Where you book matters – If you’re booking a standard room, the hotel can give you a different room just based on the booking source through which you made the reservation. Book through a reputable source or website to ensure you’re not booked in next to the laundry area.

Loyalty - You’ll have a better chance of a free upgrade if you are loyal to the hotel and provide repeat business. It doesn’t hurt at the time of reservation to let them know that you’ve stayed there before.

Hotels know that it costs a lot less to keep a repeat customer happy then it is to acquire a new one, so often they’ll give special treatment to return customers.

Title drop - There aren’t any guarantees, but you may find that title dropping can increase your chances of special treatment and upgrades.

Hotels may want to impress you more because they know you’re an important businessperson, someone who can refer new business or have blogging or press power.

Hopefully this has answered some of your questions on how to get an upgrade, but please comment below if you would like to as another question.

The London Guide: News, Updates and Launches

Posted by Bon Vivant

2010 was an impressive year for restaurants in London, ending with a flurry of new openings including Brawn, the new venture from the team behind Terroirs on Columbia Road in East London, which is already delighting bloggers and reviewers alike; The Savoy Grill, Gordon Ramsay’s grand reincarnation at The Savoy; and Roux at The Landau, a new venture for the Roux family at The Langham hotel.

Heston Blumenthal’s first foray into the London restaurant scene will be at the Mandarin Oriental from 31st January 2011 with ‘Dinner’ by Heston, which is certainly the most anticipated opening of this year. Marcus Wareing will open The Gilbert Scott, a British brasserie at the St Pancras Renaissance hotel in February, which will also feature a 52-seat bar. Another Michelin darling, Claude Bosi from Hibiscus in Mayfair, is opening the Fox & Grapes gastropub in Wimbledon on 1st February. The new pub, which also has three bedrooms attached, is a collaboration with brother Cedric and former sous-chef at Hibiscus, Patrick Leano.

The Soho restaurant and members’ club Quo Vadis launched a new bar at the start of the year. The QV Bar is located on the ground floor next to the restaurant with its own menu of British classics and cocktails from mixologist Paul Mant.

Nearby in Soho, Ottolenghi will open a restaurant in February, serving sharing-size portions of Mediterranean, Middle Eastern and Asian cuisine. NOPI (North of Piccadilly) will be on the site of the old Club Bar & Dining.

Leicester Square will shortly be home to two new hotels with the St John Hotel due to open in January, to be followed by the W Hotel, the first W Hotel in the UK, which should be open in time for Valentine’s Day. The W Hotel will feature ‘Spice Market’, a restaurant that is already a big hit in New York, from Jean-Georges Vongerichten, a culinary heavyweight in America.

Heading over to Covent Garden, the team behind tapas restaurants Salt Yard and Dehesa have just launched the Opera Tavern on the edge of the Covent Garden Piazza on 20 January, and over in Marylebone, Andrei Lesment, previously of Baltic, brings the flavours of Scandinavia to the West End with his 26 cover restaurant, Verru.

The Restaurant at the Royal Academy of Arts has had a touch-up with a new all-day dining restaurant from Oliver Peyton. The British menu will also feature a selection of tapas-style small plates and terrines, and over 20 wines will be available by the glass.

Another refurbishment sees the Waterloo Brasserie re-open as the Waterloo Bar and Grill opposite The Old Vic theatre in Waterloo, which also has a large bar area downstairs, ideal for private parties.

On the fringes of London, London Syon Park, A Waldorf Astoria Hotel, is set to open in early 2011, in the grounds of a 200-acre English country estate, Syon Park. The hotel will look out across the Thames to Kew Gardens, and it is ideally situated between London and Heathrow. Its restaurant, The Capability, will be run by chef Lee Streeton, formerly of The Ivy and Brown’s Hotel.

This article was written for the Hg2 blog, which can be seen here.

The 2011 Michelin Guide

Posted by Bon Vivant

The 2011 Michelin guide to Great Britain and Ireland was announced today, resulting in the usual flurry of commentary, nods of agreement and shouts of disdain. Whatever your thoughts on the Michelin guide, it remains one of the best and most accurate guides to dining, despite its heavy focus on French haute cuisine, and it’s the one that restaurateurs and chefs most revere.

There are 143 Michelin starred restaurants in the UK as of today, 53 of which are in London, the highest number ever, which is a great recognition for the quality of restaurants in the country.

There are no changes at the 3 star level, meaning that Alain Ducasse at The Dorchester, Gordon Ramsay’s Royal Hospital Road, The Fat Duck and The Waterside Inn remain as the only 4 such establishments in the UK. There are two additions at the 2 star level including Helene Darroze at The Connaught in London and Restaurant Nathan Outlaw in Cornwall.

Gordon Ramsay’s gains 1 Michelin star for Petrus, along with Kitchen W8, Viajante in East London, Petersham Nurseries, 7 Park Place and Gauthier Soho. Galvin La Chapelle adds another star to the Galvin brothers’ portfolio following their success with Galvin at Windows last year, along with a Bib Gourmand (good food at reasonable prices) for Galvin Cafe a Vin.

Other notable additions in the Bib Gourmand category include the bloggers’ favourite, Polpo, Morito (Moro’s sister restaurant on Exmouth Market) and two new mid-priced Italians, Zucca in Bermondsey and Trullo in Islington.

However, it wasn’t good news for everyone – Nahm, the only Michelin starred Thai restaurant in the UK, has lost its star, along with Roussillon, where Alexis Gauthier retained a star before gaining one for his new restaurant Gauthier Soho this year. Notable deletions in the Bib Gourmand category include The Mondern Pantry and Gordon Ramsay’s Foxtrot Oscar.

The full list can be downloaded here.

Travel Guide: New Hotel Openings

Posted by Bon Vivant

This year is set to be a bumper year for the London hotel scene with a plethora of luxury and boutique hotels due to open, which should also mean new, high quality restaurants. London’s hotel bar scene is already thriving, but with high expectations for the new arrivals, we could be in for a year of very stiff martinis.

Towards the end of last year, The Savoy hotel reopened after a long and expensive renovation, bringing with it Gordon Ramsay’s Savoy Grill, which is already receiving stellar reviews, and the beautiful Beaufort Bar.

Another refurbished hotel will shortly follow suit with the reopening of the Four Seasons London scheduled for 31 January, along with Amaranto, its modern Italian restaurant from Executive Chef Adriano Cavagnini (previously at Hotel Eden, Rome), which will also have a lounge, a bar and a garden terrace. The rooftop spa has glorious views of London, including from the sauna.

Photo: The Four Seasons London

A short distance away, the Dorchester Collection’s 45 Park Lane will open in the summer where Wolfgang Puck will launch ‘Cut’, a restaurant he opened at the Beverly Wilshire hotel in Beverly Hills in 2006. I visited the original restaurant shortly after it opened and can highly rate the steaks and the tuna tartare starter.

Leicester Square will shortly be home to two new properties with the St John Hotel due to open in January, to be followed by the W Hotel, the first W Hotel in the UK, which should be open in time for Valentine’s Day.

The St Pancras Renaissance is finally scheduled to open in February, which will be ideal for Eurostar travellers, where Marcus Wareing will open The Gilbert Scott, a British brasserie.

In Clerkenwell, The Zetter is due to open a sister property in May 2011 across the road from the original boutique hotel in a Georgian townhouse which will have the feel of a private residence with just 11 rooms, two suites and a lounge and cocktail bar, all designed by interior designer Russell Sage. Further East in Dalston, the Avo Hotel will open with only 6 rooms and a penthouse.

The Eccleston Square Hotel is also scheduled to open in May 2011 in Pimlico with 40 bedrooms all with £12,000 Hasten beds from Sweden and a large focus on the in-room technology.

The Corinthia near Whitehall will have a bar designed by David Collins when it opens in April and Thompson Hotels will open Belgraves in Belgravia later in the year.

On the fringes of London, London Syon Park, A Waldorf Astoria Hotel, is set to open in early 2011, in the grounds of a 200-acre English country estate, Syon Park, home of the Duke of Northumberland. The hotel will look out across the Thames to Kew Gardens, and it is ideally situated between London and Heathrow.

Further properties are planned for 2012, including the ME hotel group’s first foray into the UK hotel market, and there are also plans to open London’s first 6 star hotel. Located just off Hyde Park in Knightsbridge the 36-bedroom townhouse hotel, The Wellesley, is currently undergoing a £36 million pound renovation, with plans to open in 2012. There are also rumours that Andre Balazs will open a hotel in a converted fire station in Marylebone.

Whilst not as active as London, Paris has also experienced notable additions, including the Shangri-La, which opened in December last year. With rooms around the EUR 800 mark, they’ll be directly competing with grande dames such as The Crillon and Plaza Athenee.

Other hotel groups will also be moving in to Paris, including the W Paris-Opera on Rue de la Chaussée d’Antin, near the Garnier Opera House, towards the end of the year and the Mandarin Oriental Paris will be located on rue Saint Honoré with a restaurant from Michelin starred chef, Thierry Marx.

Hotel O is due to open in the summer in the Les Halles district, near the Louvre, along with its sister hotel, Hotel Le Crayon, which describes itself as ‘a poetic, bucolic and artistic hotel that dares to play a game of audacious combinations’.

It has been rumoured that Paris will also be the destination for the next Armani Hotel, along with the current properties in Dubai and Milan.

In New York, 2010 saw the opening of the James Hotel in Soho, The Mark Hotel on the Upper East Side, with its excellent Jean-Georges restaurant, and The Chatwal in Midtown, with the trend set to continue during 2011, with openings including the Setai Fifth Avenue and the Morgans Hotel Group’s Mondrian Soho.

For further information on these hotels or to make a booking, please contact us.

How To Use A Concierge: Top 10 Concierge Requests

Posted by Emyr Thomas

Your concierge can do many things to help you manage your life and regain control of your free time – plan your holidays, arrange your birthday party, send flowers to a loved one or arrange for someone to collect your dry cleaning. Here are ten specific examples of how to use a concierge.

How to use a Concierge for Travel? Book Your Holidays

Our travel concierge service can research and book your ideal holiday, whether it’s a family villa holiday in Morocco, a shopping trip to New York or a weekend escape to the British countryside, giving you access to discounts, free upgrades, late check-outs and free champagne.

We recently secured a 25% discount for a client at a hotel in New York, and we regularly arrange for complimentary upgrades and welcome amenities for our clients.

How to use a concierge for Nightlife? Bars and Clubs

Our lifestyle management team will book your restaurants and bars, whether it’s for a romantic dinner for two, a business lunch or a casual week day catch-up with friends. We’ll even be able to give you and your guests free champagne at some of London’s best restaurants.

We can also advise on the coolest new bar or restaurant to visit – our regular guide will make sure you’re in the know.

If you feel like a night out, we can put you and your guests on the guestlist for an exclusive nightclub, including complimentary entry in many cases.

How to use your concierge for culture? The Theatre and Concerts

If you want to visit the theatre, we can advise on the best West End play for your tastes – we can also pre-book tickets for the next big play.

We can book tickets, including VIP tickets and box seats for any concert – If you want tickets for a sold out concerts, just ask.

How to use your concierge for your loved ones? Parties and Gifts

For your birthday or Christmas party, if you don’t want to plan it yourself, leave it to us. We’ll find the venue, arrange the food and drink as well as any entertainment or staff that you may need. We recently organised a party for a client at The Hospital Club in Covent Garden which is a great space for an intimate gathering or a large corporate event.

If you haven’t got time to find the right gift for a loved one, we can suggest examples and then source and deliver them on your behalf – we often send flowers (with a discount of up to 20%) and we ordered many Christmas presents for our members too.

How to your a concierge for clients? Client Entertainment

If you have clients to entertain, we can arrange everything for you, whether you want full hospitality at Wimbledon or Twickenham, a table at an awards ceremony, or if you want a private dining room to discuss an important deal.

We deal with all the practical issues too - hiring a car for the weekend, finding a cleaner to visit your home, booking a hairdresser or arranging for someone to collect your dry cleaning, all at preferred rates (sometimes up to 35% off).

In short, we can help with anything that you don’t have the time, inclination or expertise to do yourself to make your life run that little bit more smoothly.

To join Bon Vivant and access our insider knowledge and expertise, to enjoy complimentary benefits and to have an expert help you to maximise your free time, contact us now.

Chris Pople from Cheese and Biscuits

Posted by Bon Vivant

In this instalment of my recommended food and restaurant blogs, I would like to introduce Chris Pople from Cheese and Biscuits.

Name: Chris Pople, Cheese and Biscuits

How would you describe your blog? A place to find hyperbolic, ill-researched but hopefully entertaining reviews of mainly London restaurants.

What’s your favourite restaurant in London, Chris Pople? The Ledbury for fine dining, Chilli Cool for Chinese, Polpetto for Italian, Tayyabs for Indian/Pakistani and for sheer frothing madness, Bob Bob Ricard.

What makes the perfect restaurant for you? It depends what a place is going for. The noise, queues and stress of Tayyabs doesn’t make it any less brilliant, but I wouldn’t want to queue up in the cold for 45 minutes anywhere else.

I think the best places are all about value – The Ledbury is expensive, but you get what you pay for and then some – the extra surprises, the extra mile that the very best restaurants go, in all price ranges, these are the things that mark out somewhere special.

Are you excited about any new openings during 2011? Heston’s new place, obviously! Other than that, I’m not really as clued up as some people about new openings, and usually find out about a new place just as I get the press release email.

Russell Norman’s Spuntino should be worth a look-in though, if it ever actually does open.

What has been your worst restaurant experience? Worst food was probably Aberdeen Angus, but worst experience overall, for various reasons, Dego in Fitzrovia. I had a diabolical meal – stale bread, catastrophically ill-advised dishes, incompetent in almost every respect.

And I said as much on the blog. But it was the reaction of Dego’s PR people, who set about rallying staff and friends to leave angry shilly comments on the post that really surprised me. Their defensiveness only served to underline how bad the place was of course.

If you could give a new restaurant advice before opening, what would it be? Try to do something different. Don’t over-reach. Keep your menu short. And if you get a bad review, respond politely or not at all. Oh and do US BBQ please – everywhere else in London is crap for that.

Which of the newspaper reviewers do you like / hate the most? Giles Coren and AA Gill are probably the best writers of them all, although I’m not sure I’d use either to decide where to eat.

For reliable reviews from people whose tastes most match my own, Marina O’Loughlin in the Metro or Jay Rayner in the Observer.

What’s your favourite post on your blog? It probably doesn’t mean much to anyone else, but I enjoyed writing up this little bar that does pork cheeks in Catalonia.

What’s the future direction of your blog? There’s no plan, really. Just keep going to restaurants and occasionally writing them up. As long as I enjoy doing it, I will carry on.

Which other blogs, food or otherwise, would you recommend? Far too many to list here, but for similar reasons to Marina and Jay above, Hollow Legs and Food Stories have very similar tastes to my own and have the added bonus of being extraordinarily good cooks and recipe bloggers too. I

always look forward to the Dos Hermanos reviews, and thirtyoneseventyfive.com and Hugh Wright’s TwelvePointFivePercent are also excellent reads.

Chris Pople’s blog Cheese and Biscuits is one of London’s most popular food and restaurant blogs.

Restaurant Blogs: Hugh Wright’s TwelvePointFivePercent

Posted by Bon Vivant

Readers of this blog have a great interest in restaurants, therefore I thought I would introduce you to some of my favourite food and restaurant blogs. Here’s the first Q&A session with Hugh Wright from TwelvePointFivePercent.

Name: Hugh Wright, TwelvePointFivePercent

How would you describe your blog? A wholly selfish endeavour which enables me to combine two of my very favourite pastimes, eating out and writing. That a (seemingly ever-increasing) number of people appear to enjoy reading the self-indulgently wordy results is a very welcome by-product indeed.

What’s your favourite restaurant in London, Hugh Wright? Such a difficult one but at the moment I would say it’s neck-and-neck between Cecconi’s and Dean Street Townhouse as both so perfectly combine all the things I look for in a restaurant (see next question for what that is!).

However I also absolutely love my local Mexican, Cafe Sol Dos in Clapham, as I have been eating there regularly for the last ten years and never, ever had a bad meal.

What makes the perfect restaurant for you? Eating out for me is all about the whole experience; food is a big part of that but not everything. I’m really not bothered about food being gourmet, or perfect, or innovative, as long as it’s good.

I can forgive so-so food if the room’s amazing, the service impeccable and there’s a great buzz (e.g Dean Street Townhouse), but if you served me the finest food in the world in a crappy space with no atmosphere and snooty staff I’d be miserable. Very, very few places get the mix exactly right.

What’s next on your hit list? I’m less interested in getting to new restaurants than I am in trying established places that are new to me but have great reputations: The Greenhouse, Pied A Terre and Galvin La Chapelle are all high on that list, I’m itching to get to L’Anima, and I am really hoping that one day a rich man (or woman!) will want to take me to Umu.

Of recent openings, I’m keen to get to Cassis Bistro as I’d like to see how it compares to Cigalon, which I loved.

Are you excited about any new openings during 2011? Honestly – no. While I do take a keen interest in restaurant news and what’s happening on the scene, I’m not generally ‘excited’ by it. I’m interested to see if Corbin & King bring anything new to the scene with their touted The Delaunay on Aldwych but that’s the only one that springs to mind.

What has been your worst restaurant experience? It was before I started blogging but I still remember Corrigan’s in Mayfair being a huge and expensive disappointment. I’d loved Richard Corrigan’s cooking at the Lindsay House (now Gauthier Soho) and had high hopes for his eponymous restaurant but was left completely underwhelmed by the food and particularly the disjointed, disinterested service.

I don’t feel bad about saying this either, because I gave the restaurant the opportunity to put things right at the time and they were completely apathetic.

If you could give a new restaurant advice before opening, what would it be? Don’t be over-ambitious. Be realistic about how many covers and sittings your kitchen, waiting staff and reservations team can handle to a high standard and stick to it.

Which of the newspaper reviewers do you like / hate? I love and revere Marina O’Loughlin (Metro) and Fay Maschler (Standard) and actively look forward to Wednesdays and Thursdays when their reviews appear.

The ladies’ occasional stand-ins Andy Lynes and Andrew Neathers are also very entertaining. Tracey Macleod in the Indy is fab, and I miss Terry Durack, ex of the Independent on Sunday who’s moved back down under.

I don’t ‘hate’ anyone but I do think that A.A.Gill’s Sunday Times reviews, the style of which hasn’t changed in all the years he’s been doing them, are now the oldest of old, old hat and he should be put out to pasture.

What’s your favourite post on your blog? I think my favourite one is always the one I’ve just written. I had lots of fun with my recent post on Hibiscus though it combined a bit of reportage about the London Restaurant Festival with the review of the restaurant, which was a bit of a departure for me.

What’s the future direction of your blog? More of the same to be honest; it really is just a hobby to me, not something I’m actively seeking to grow or develop but if time allows in 2011 I’d like to blog more regularly as it’s rather sporadic at the moment.

Which other blogs, food or otherwise, would you recommend? Other than yours of course, my favourite blogs are about one of my other loves, fashion. I absolutely love www.anastasia-duck.com for the wit, quality and originality of the writing and the often captivating photography.

Another great one is www.thedashempire.com which is as entertaining as it is informative. Food wise I generally tend to enjoy blogs about food more than other restaurant blogs; Luke Mackay makes me shriek with laughter sometimes and James Ramsden is just wonderful.

I’m in mourning still for Dave Knockles’ utterly obscene blog I Am The Client which sadly is no more. Lastly I love every single word that The Uncommon Client writes about luxury; I live vicariously through this exquisitely eloquent young man’s take on all things fine and fabulous.