Experimental Chalet Verbier

Motoring through the foothills of Valais, in the southwestern-most corner of Switzerland, Mrs Smith and I were playing a competitive game of Celebrity Who’s Who. ‘You know, the Beckhams, Madonna and the Royals visit Verbier regularly,’ Mrs Smith informed me, as we chicaned onto a handsome road, all centerfold curves and bumps in the right places. ‘Ah, but so does James Blunt,’ I replied, mischievously. ‘And I know you can’t stand him.’ She curled her lip as if to say I’d gone too far. Still, our excitement was plain to see. We were on our way to the smartest, chicest, most talked-about place in the Alps. 

The Experimental Chalet Verbier is the kind of box-fresh stay that’d attract a bevy full of celebrities even if it were only half as good. Sir Richard Branson, William and Harry, Beatrice and Eugenie, and some say Leonardo DiCaprio are all regulars in the resort. The likelihood is they’ll soon be queueing for a reservation at The Experimental Chalet Verbier — and it’s not hard to see why. It’s utterly original (thanks to Italian designer, Fabrizio Casiraghi) eschewing anything else we tend to think of when considering Alpine ski towns, and its restaurant and cocktail bar pretty much guarantee a ruthlessly hip crowd.

To set the scene: beyond the Swiss-red and snow-white shuttered frontage of the 1950s-era building, the resort’s main street gives way to a brasserie arranged snugly around a fireplace and vintage reception of the kind set-designed in Wes Anderson’s The Grand Hotel Budapest. The decor is all velvet banquette seating, spearmint-green palette and design catalogue tables and chairs. There is a subtle antler chandelier as a reminder you’re in the Alps, not Paris or Geneva.

Anyone seeking a more prosaic description of The Experimental Chalet Verbier might want to note that, at least aesthetically, the hotel is a warmer extension of the Experimental Cocktail Club brand, set up in Paris in 2007 by three childhood friends, Olivier Bon, Pierre-Charles Cros and Romée de Goriainoff, and followed by outposts in New York, London and Ibiza. We were instantly wowed by the team’s latest distillation of their look: eclectic, almost-improvised furniture and intimate service soundtracked by low-fi French electro.

Mrs Smith was still trying to out-fox me with more celebrity Verbier visitors when we found our room among the warren of doubles on the second floor. I had Ed Sheeran, Jude Law, Bear Grylls and Jamie Oliver in reserve, so was hardly worried and as we settled into our minimalist room we pressed our noses to the window to see the fairy landscape outside. Past the kingsize bed, the clam shell lamps and soft-edged side tables, we looked upon a joyous, sun-soaked view.

Only in a country as unashamedly beautiful as Switzerland would a road scramble upwards in search of a Shangri-La at the end of a u-shaped valley. But that is exactly what Verbier is. Its mountains, of the kind a child would would scrawl in a sketchbook, are snow-capped and peaked, skirted by evergreen forests and dressed with exceptionally pretty log cabin chalets. The promise of cable cars to ride, high Alpine plateaux to hike, and forest trails to careen down, is equally evocative and acutely Swiss. Before heading out, we had a quick snoop around. On the first floor is an Art Deco-inspired cocktail bar — all blissful slow-jams and innovative cocktails — and downstairs is the Farm Club, a renowned après institution for the resort’s rich and famous, now given a new lease of life. Most impressive of all is the spa, situated on the ground floor with a hammam, jacuzzi and solarium. It felt like stepping through the looking glass into another realm.

Verbier’s bold, high-wire act is that there’s as much to do in the mountains as in the town itself. Exquisite shopping experiences and haute cuisine tempt people off the slopes before they can say ‘après ski’. We mooched around Route de la Poste, popping our noses into stores, Mrs Smith dangling a credit card around as if she’d won the lottery.

The resort is no St Moritz dripping in fur and Elizabeth Taylor diamonds. So don’t expect any Chanel, Gucci or Bulgari here. Instead: Moncler, Patagonia, Arc’teryx and Zadig; Voltaire fill the storefronts, while reinforcements in the wings come from fabulous restaurants, including fondue specialist Chez Dany (admittedly higher up the resort, but still worth the effort) and Restaurant La Cordée, a brasserie from French wonder chef Fabrice Taulier. Afterwards, our bellies sloshing from too much Swiss wine, we rolled to bed, high on mountain air.

Cut to next morning: hungover and at breakfast, which was served in the ground-floor restaurant. Mountain cheese and air-dried hams were presented next to baskets of squidgy baguettes, pots of wild honey and frothy juices. Eggs and bratwursts were on the menu, so too udder-fresh milk and lighter-than-air yoghurts. In fact, it smacked of so much provenance there was little doubting a farmer somewhere in the valley had sweat on his brow and dirt under his fingernails.

On one level, it shouldn’t be surprising that the Experimental Chalet Verbier is as good as it is — food, drink, design, service, the full monty. Here is a hotel that’s able to give the best Alpine boutique hotels a run for their money and Mrs Smith, a Swiss national raised outside Zurich and obsessed (like many of her compatriots) with efficiency and details, was seriously impressed.

‘Let’s come back next year with my Mum,’ said Mrs Smith, hoping to book-end our stay with a repeat reservation. ‘Sure, I mean they let all sorts of riffraff in these days,’ I replied. The elbow in the ribs that followed was all I deserved, really.