Travel Blog - Mr & Mrs Smith Boutique & Luxury Hotels

Just came across this wondrous collection of hotel door hangers posted by graphic designer Michael Lebowitz on his Big Spaceship blog and simply had to share.

Not only do they form a truly beautiful retro graphic-design time capsule, they gave me a massive hit of nostalgia for ‘the old days’ of hotel travel (note, I didn’t say ‘good’ old days): I can almost smell the orange polyester-trimmed wool blankets, recall the cream and brown plastic packaging of the mini toiletries, and the job-lot watercolours of elephants, mediaeval castles or tropical hibiscus plants. Not like today’s stylish luxury boutique hotels, with their pillow menus, Starck-spangled bathrooms and LaChapelle-adorned walls.

I only wish I could share with you my own collection of hotel ephemera, which ranged from bar coasters and luggage tags to retro hotel cocktail stirrers (aka swizzle sticks). This was also diversified into the little plastic cocktail sticks that held the maraschino cherry in place atop your Piña Colada (usually in the form of a miniature cutlass). The collection had to be whittled down (ie, binned) after a recent move into a teeny tiny flat. Several of my favourite cocktail stirrers came from the Falcon Lounge cocktail bar at the Malta Hilton – including a gold-coloured plastic 1970s number, topped with a spreadeagled bird of prey clutching a golden egg.

Another form of vintage ephemera sadly now consigned to the rubbish bin of time (thanks to the smoking ban) is the hotel-brand matchbox or matchbook – definitely a sign of the cigar-friendly-Seventies times, since free matches are now as rare as hen’s teeth. Let us know if you collect any travel-related oddities: naff souvenirs, perhaps. Pictures welcome…

Vegetarians, look away now…

Since meat is rapidly becoming as valuable as gold bullion, and the UN has upsettingly hinted we all eat a little less of it, we at Smith HQ reckon that it’s more important than ever to make sure that the slices of ex-cow that pass our lips are of the utmost quality. With this in mind, the Smith editorial team (that’s the elite squad of Juliet, Rufus, Lucy, Jasmine and me, in case you were wondering) have been on a meat-seeking mission to find the best steak in London. (Lucy was obliged to suspend her quest for London’s best coffee in order to participate).

There could be no better place for our steakout (sorry, I fear there are more of these to come) than Hawksmoor. This Manhattanite blend of cocktail bar and steakhouse is half-hidden on a blink-and-you’re-in-Nando’s stretch of Commercial Street round the back of Spitalfields. Cityboy territory, it’s true, but given that at the moment most cityboys are spending their evenings weeping into their Maserati dashboards, we were confident that the restaurant wouldn’t exactly be packed.

We were wrong: by 8pm, every last cherry-wood table was occupied, but more of that later.

Hawksmoor’s owned by bar mogul, restauranteur, general entrepreneur and Guardian beer evangelist, Will Beckett, who opened it with his business partner, Huw Gott, in 2006. Since then, the rampantly carnivorous food critic Jay Rayner, has declared Hawksmoor’s fare ‘the best steak I have ever eaten in this country’, and the steaks on offer are apparently even good enough to make the redoubtable Giles Coren end a restaurant review on an unstressed syllable.

We were lucky enough to meat (sorry, again) Will for a quick - if heavyweight - cocktail or two before dinner. For a man with two restaurants, a bar, a gastropub and a consultancy firm in his accounts book, he’s unexpectedly down to earth, much younger than his success would suggest, and, of course, passionate about bovine cooking. Will starts by telling us about his tequila - he imports it directly from a small producer in Guadelajara - which makes up a key component in Hawksmoor’s cocktail selection. Ah yes, the cocktails. The bar menu is practically a chronicle of the history of American mixology from Prohibition onwards, and we were forced to admit collective defeat at the gullet-boggling variety on offer and put our palates in the hands of Hawksmoor’s formidable barman. With barely a moment’s thought, he shook us each up our own individual taste-matched tipples - I particularly enjoyed the heady bourbon concoction he rustled up for me.

Will, meanwhile is waxing lyrical about the Hawksmoor kitchen’s slow-matured grass-fed beef, fresh from the butchering legends at the Ginger Pig. When asked to offer a quick run-down of which cut of beef comes from which bit of cow, Will beckons his manager Claudia over for a visual demonstration.

‘I’ll be the cow,’ he says, and Claudia gamely turns Will’s body into a handy meat map.

In terms of the best steak cut, Will’s a fan of ribeye, (which is apparently sourced from somewhere under his right shoulder) because ‘the fat adds flavour as it cooks’, rather than the populist fillet option (from a patch of his lower back), which is ‘more tender, but has less flavour’, but recommends that the best course of action in our quest for the perfect steak would be to share several cuts - and we’re more than happy to bow to his beefy wisdom.

Despite Hawksmoor’s indisputably steaky nature, it’s no slouch on the starter front. The scallops we order are exactly as they should be - a crispy sear on the outside and a meltingly moussey centre, and the Tamworth ribs are laced with a tangy marinade of honey and fennel seed. Delicious, of course, but the meat’s the main event.

Steak, like porn stars and 19th-century murderers, should be well hung. Thanks to their four weeks spent maturing, Hawksmoor’s fleshy, marbled slabs are rich and bloodless, thick macho hunks that any cow would be proud to leave to posterity. The menu lists rump and ribeye, fillet and sirloin, as you’d predict, but also promises chateaubriand, T-bone, even hanger, if you let the kitchen know two days beforehand. Ana, our waitress, lets slip that they’ve got a T-bone and a chateaubriand stashed away in the fridge, so we pounce on the opportunity, with a 300g fillet thrown in for good measure. You order fillet in 100g increments, so you can tailor its size to suit your appetite, whether you eat like a horse or a bird. (That’d be a carnivorous horse, and a flesh-eating bird, naturally…)

Sided with some triple-cooked chips (that’s boiled, chilled, deep-fried, chilled again and fried again, in case you don’t have Heston Blumenthal’s recipe memorised), and a smattering of token greens, our steaks are soon migrating from plate to plate as we taste-test each one. They’re cooked magnificently, in that maple-hued-outside, magenta-inside way that can only be achieved by chefs who’ve trained for decades at a Bhutanese mountainside temple (or whatever it is they do).

By the time we reach dessert (a 50s-beachfrontish selection of knickerbocker glories and, delightfully enough, jelly and ice cream) and drained the last velvety drops of Rioja (Hawksmoor’s wine list is also a force to be reckoned with), we’re convinced that our search for the perfect steak may have already come to an end. There’s no denying that Will and Huw are working from a winning formula at the Hawksmoor – jazzy cocktails, excellent wine, and implausibly good steak – so we can only hope that a) the rumours circulating that there our more branches in the pipeline are true, and b), the cows don’t run out.

So, the question is, if Hawksmoor doesn’t occupy the role of best steakhouse in London, what other restaurant might fillet? (I did warn you…)

Stayed somewhere amazing? Tell us about it!

When it comes to researching hip holiday homes, you realise just what a valuable service Smith provides with Smith & Friends (our cherry-picked collection of self-catering properties and vacation rentals), when you have to scour the internet for private properties with that boutique-hotel wow factor.

It’s tremendously hard seeking out really special self-catering stays for Smith & Friends, as places that are genuinely stylish or chic in every way are few and far between.

In order to find one diamond you have to wade through hundreds and hundreds of hive-inducing bedspreads, dodgy sofas, hideous headboards, and terrible 80s wooden kitchens (I won’t even mention the decades-old B&Q bathrooms) to find the occasional Starck-fitted, Designers Guild-furnished cool cottage. And then there’s the actual in-person visit to check towels are properly plumped, glasses aren’t chipped and there’s no cigarette burn on the bedsheets. Gosh our members have it lucky being able to refer to our hand-picked selection of chic retreats.

We’ve been exhaustively scouring Britain’s favourite holidayspots to unearth a few more 2/3-bedroom cottages, two hours from London, but we’d love to find new properties in the Cotswolds, Dorset, Sussex and Kent, or on the coast (especially in Devon, Cornwall).

SO if any of you have stayed somewhere truly special, answers on a postcard please. Or better still, share your recommendations with us.

We’d love to add a few smaller luxe-for-less lodgings to our collection, with a super-high level of attention-to-detail, and sophisticated taste in design and decor.

So what would be my fantasy Smith & Friends escape?

Read the rest of this entry »

Just a quickie:

We’re happy to report we’ve got a wee mention on the excellent Europe á la Carte blog, an online travel mag that’s been highlighting the best and worst of European travel since the internet was in its infancy. Lucy’s rundown of Britain’s best coastal resorts back in August has been flagged up in their monthly round-up of interesting travel tidbits in Webworld (alongside featurettes about biking in Ireland, exploring Moldova, and a UK family that upped sticks and went gallivanting around Europe in a camper van).

Incidentally, we’re looking forward to meeting Karen Bryan (creator of Europe à la Carte) at the Travel Blog Camp next month – Travelrants creator Darren Cronian’s get-together for travel companies and bloggers in November…

In the first of what (we hope) will be a series of insider interviews with hoteliers, we caught up with Tim Haigh and Rupert Pendered – the boys behind Barnsley House – to find out what makes them tick and reveal some behind-the-scenes goings-on (warning: may contain bullwhips and sailors).

Barnsley House is one of Mr & Mrs Smith’s favourite Cotswolds hotels, and the hotel was featured in our fifth guidebook, Mr & Mrs Smith Hotel Collection: UK/Ireland Volume 2. (You can check out the anonymous review of Barnsley House online if you like, or buy the book, which has nice pictures, too.)

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Hey there. Introduce yourselves to our captive audience…

We are Tim Haigh and Rupert Pendered, and we own Barnsley House, as well as The Village Pub in Barnsley, and the Catherine Wheel in Bibury.

Fine establishments…  What makes Barnsley House so special do you think? How would you describe its style?

The world-famous gardens [by Rosemary Verey]: they are quite simply breathtaking. In addition, the 17th-century manor house is one of the prettiest in the Cotswolds. The style is relaxed and informal, but with professional service.

If you were booked into Barnsley House for the night, which room would you go for and why?

We would stay in Room 7, which has its own conservatory, a private terrace and a sitting room with an open fire. The terrace leads onto the formal gardens. The rooms were also where Rosemary Verey kept her library, wrote her books and designed her gardens.

What would you suggest we do in the area near Barnsley House if we were staying with you?

Beautiful country walks, visiting pretty Cotswold villages and towns, and the Daylesford Farm Shop.

Where do you go when you don’t fancy eating at the hotel?

For lunch or dinner, we recommend the Village Pub or the Catherine Wheel in Bibury, as Barnsley House guests can charge everything to their room tab.

How about recommending some pubs you don’t own?!

Alternatively, there’s the Swan at Southrop and the Plough at Kingham, both of which we also like to visit!

What’s the weirdest thing you’ve found in one of your rooms after a guest has left? Or tell us about a special request you’ve handled for a guest…

The funniest thing left in a room was a black leather bullwhip (the guests never contacted us to ask for it back, unsurprisingly!). The most interesting thing we’ve been asked was to provide a sailor, in uniform, for two guys from New York (we did actually manage to arrange this!).

What do you think are the ingredients of a great hotel manager?

A great hotel manager should be welcoming and friendly, while offering an unobtrusive professional service.

What trends do expect to see taking off in hotels in future?

We believe that more and more hotel restaurants will offer simpler food with ingredients that have been locally sourced. Guests are demanding very high standards of service, and we believe that the interiors will become less cluttered, and less fussy.

Any big plans for Barnsley House’s own immediate or long-term future you want to share with us?

We have just opened our second pub, the Catherine Wheel, and we hope to open a Barnsley House farm shop soon. We’ll keep you posted.

Aside from your own (obviously), what’s your favourite hotel, and why?

Villa Feltrinelli on Lake Garda in Italy for its location, style and fabulous service.

If you didn’t run a hotel, what would you do?

Rupert: Wine merchant.

Tim: Pilot.

If you could work in any destination in the world, where would you choose and why?

Rupert: South America, for its scenery and culture.

Tim: New Zealand, for its beautiful countryside, wine, food and weather.

What do you do when you’re not at work?

Rupert: Gardening, fishing and driving my classic car.

Tim: Flying.

Where do you go on holiday and do you find it hard to switch off?

We always go somewhere new and exciting; we like to try out new destinations. And, yes, we find it very hard to switch off!

What do you never leave home without?

A good book and sunglasses.

What’s the first thing you check out when you’ve checked into a hotel?

We tend to dump our bags and head straight out to explore.

Where’s the most romantic place you’ve ever been?

Fiji, for beautiful weather, relaxing and dinners on the beach.

Find out more about Barnsley House…

Just yesterday, we launched our October collection, and (as promised last month) beefed up our Brazilian boutique-hotel selection in the process. Not content with just three luxury city hotels in Rio, which we had previously, we dispatched the intrepid Laura and Katy to the beach-lined state of Bahia to uncover the finest in coastal comfort, shore-side chic and palm-shaded luxury. Returning with capirinha-giddy tales of jungle adventure, high-drama capoeira performances, scuba delights and private plane rides, our hotel hounds didn’t disappoint (but then, it’d be pretty hard to fail when your mission is essentially ‘go and sample the luxuries of a tropical beach paradise’). Thanks to a combination of their sophisticated tastes, their impeccable Smith sense, and some darn fine note-taking abilities, we now have five heart-stoppingly beautiful boutique resorts in our collection.

Here’s a taster:

Etnia Pousada – a cluster of jungle bungalows in trendy Trancoso, each decorated with a different geographical theme.

Kiaroa – apart from having a name reminiscent of over-sugared orange-squash, this is a luxury eco-resort on the tip of the Marau Peninsula, ideal for water babies and beach bunnies alike (it may, however, be too orangey for crows).

Tauana Hotel – nine wooden cabañas on the Corumbau beachfront, with some of the most stunning scenery in South America on the doorstep.

Fazenda da Lagoa – made for hammock-based snoozing and spa-based pampering, this bright and breezy beach resort can only be reached by boat.

Fazenda São Francisco – a terracotta-toned farm hotel on a Corambau sand bar, on the palm-lined, hikeable fringes of the Atlantic Forest.

Meanwhile, the brains behind Smith’s stateside operations, Rodrigo, was passing through Rio de Janeiro and stopped in at Casa 32, a remarkable little property with just two suites that we’re delighted to add to our already-pretty-spiffing Rio hotel collection.

A few lines of latitude further north, Mary visited the indescribably glamorous St Regis hotel in Washington DC (thus sparking many a ‘Mrs Smith Goes to Washington’ gag here in Smith HQ). Just a cigar’s throw away from the White House, this DC landmark has recently had a top-to-toe makeover and is now one of the most exclusive addresses in the nation’s capital.

Oh, and remember that we promised a brace of Costwolds country inns a month or so back? Well, whip off your wellies and snuggle down by the inglenooks at Ilse Crawford’s gorgeous Olde Bell or at cosy rural gastropub the Ragged Cot – both of which have just been launched. Alongside these, we’ve got what may be the most child-friendly hotel in the UK, Calcot Manor, as well as an utterly remarkable design den, Cotswolds88 Hotel, that has to be stayed in to be believed…

In the introduction to the October issue of Elle Deco magazine, editor Michelle Ogundehin references the ten statements made by German industrial designer, Dieter Rams. She celebrates his definition of good design made in the early Eighties in honour of the London Design Festival this month, and the annual design issue of the magazine. At Mr & Mrs Smith, great design is also a subject we often reflect on, so I thought I would share these too on our Blog…

• Good design is innovative.
• Good design makes a product useful.
• Good design is aesthetic.
• Good design helps a product to be understood.
• Good design is honest.
• Good design is durable.
• Good design is long-lasting.
• Good design is consistent to the last detail.
• Good design considers the environment.
• Good design is as little design as possible.

Ok, they’re not really a secret, since you could have worked out who we are by looking us up on Mr & Mrs Smith’s home page, but we know how generation Facebook loves a photo, so we’ve given you some. Here. Take a look behind the scenes at Smith HQ and see the computer-monkeys talented people whose fingers tippy-tap type all these travel blog posts for you. They even tell you which hotels they like in what we’ve called – ahem - ‘Blographies‘. (D’ya see what we did there? Can you say ©™®?) You’ll find the blographies to your right, under Features Pages >>>>

Poor souls – they brave high temperatures, low seasons, strong liquor and strange foreign lands to bring you all their latest boutique-hotel news and insider interviews, as well as pinpoint the best places to eat, drink and make merry (with the occasional lateral slide into topics such as where to get a decent coffee, how to shop smart in NYC, and other stuff you didn’t know you wanted to know). Don’t feel too sorry for them though – they don’t get into beds with less than a 200+ thread-count…

We at Smith Towers have always liked things that come in twos. Mr Smith and Mrs Smith, for example; two nights for the price of one; double bathtubs… So we’re understandably delighted about the launch of British Airways’ new Metrotwin website, which highlights all that’s good about those two great modern cities London and New York.

Packed with recommendations – best restaurants, great views, top shops, favourite walks, etc – from a panel of hand-picked travel experts, Metrotwin also encourages residents and visitors to the metropolises to add their comments, suggestions and personal tips, thus creating the ultimate NYLON online community. ‘British Airways is a company which connects people. We fly more people between London and New York than anyone else,’ says BA’s digital marketing manager Chris Davies. ‘Creating a community website about the best of what’s on offer in the two cities we know best is a credible and useful tool.’

We heartily agree. So imagine how flattered we were when Metrotwin asked us to become one of its experts. The list of our favourite boutique hotels in London and New York is available to view now on www.metrotwin.com, and we’ll continue to share our travel expertise with it. We’re going to build this thing together, as Starship once said; nothing’s gonna stop us now. However, Starship also claimed to build a city on rock and roll, which, as far as we’re aware, doesn’t apply to either London or New York – so it’s perhaps best we don’t take their words too seriously. Just keep checking our entries on Metrotwin. Who knows? Perhaps we’ll inspire you to add your own.

Hey! Not-so-big spender

From labels for less in SoHo to thrifty vintage treasures in Brooklyn, here’s my two cents on savvy shopping in New York City, which I originally wrote for The Observer newspaper:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/2008/jun/29/shoppingtrips.newyork

Thanks to the pound-dollar exchange rate, we’ve been flocking to US shores to hit the stores – but since many locals claim shopping in Manhattan is pricier than ever, it’s still worth arming yourself with insider tips on the wisest buys. It’s no secret that the most satisfactory shopping finds are usually the worst signposted, so while retail landmarks like Macy’s are as hard to find as a cow in a haystack, exploit the easy-to-navigate street grid and seek out best-in-class bargains. The big thing in Manhattan right now may be exclusive no-sign-outside, need-to-know-the-right-doorbell-to-ring type places, but we’re not suggesting you come over quite so elitist, just wise up as to what to find where and when. As any fashionista worth their salt knows, tracking down latest-season Louboutins on sale is not just a success for style and wallet, but a big one in the boasting bank. As for one-off thrift-shop treasures that’d give Sex and the City stylist Patricia Field a run for her money, that’s pure anecdotal gold for anyone even half-heartedly style-conscious. Cross the bridge to Brooklyn or browse the neighbourhood north of Little Italy and even if you don’t stock up on purchases, you’ll soak up what gives this city soul in the process. And when it comes to cost, nothing’s more gratifying for shopping veterans than yelping ‘Gessowmuch!’ to pals back home, safe in the knowledge their price-tag predictions won’t get anywhere close.

Advice on when to go: To find out who’s discounting when, go to www.nysale.com. Great sales on summer stock appear throughout July and August and autumn/winter wear is reduced massively for Columbus Day, the second weekend in October. On Tuesday 4 November, America will be celebrating its new president, so you’ve no excuse not to splash out on new threads for Election Day, a date that sees further price slashes. Friday after Thanksgiving, the last one in November, is perfect for one-swoop Christmas shopping – but sharpen your elbows, it’s notoriously busy.