December 21, 2009

EUROPE | ENGLAND | LONDON

Street Dreams

By Lucinda Baring

Soho House rolls out the welcome mat for its non-members.

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Hear that? That’s an angel’s choir heralding my passage past the velvet rope and into the latest hotspot by Soho House Group, the private-club empire. No, I’m not a member; but I don’t have to be at Dean Street Townhouse, the group’s new London hotel and restaurant. It’s a democratic move in the face of an impending tide of exclusivity: members-only Soho Houses are expected to open next year in West Hollywood, Miami and Berlin.

With Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin as its first guests, Dean Street recently opened in the heart of Soho and just around the corner from the Soho House that started it all. Dean Street’s four-storey Georgian building has an illustrious past, too: it was once the Gargoyle Club, a seedy drinking den frequented by Noel Coward, Graham Greene and Francis Bacon — and, more recently, a massage parlour, nightclub and pub.

True to Soho-House form, the 39-room hotel feels like an English country home with a contemporary twist. The lobby has a fireplace and dark wood shelves lined with antique books, while the bedrooms are styled with hand-painted wallpaper and high oak beds. You’ll find both a Bose iPod dock and an old-fashioned-looking Roberts radio at the bedside. The complimentary tea and coffee come in silver boxes, and are drunk in bone china cups and saucers.

There’s no PR spin to the space you’ll be getting either: room categories are named “tiny, small, medium and bigger (pictured),” and range from roughly $200 to $400. And then there’s the refreshingly honest “Broom Cupboard,” which comes with an equally diminutive price tag of about $145. (Did we mention this is the heart of the West End?)

Though your bedroom may be “granny-chic,” you’ll find some stellar flash in the restaurant, which serves an English menu of locally-sourced ingredients (oysters from Essex, fish from the Cornish coast). The walls of the dining room are adorned with work by the crème de la crème of British contemporary art: think Gavin Turk, Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin. Just don’t be surprised if one of them is lunching next to you — Emin was spotted recently pondering the rice pudding.