Palihotel Culver City

Before we’ve even arrived at luxury hideaway Palihotel Culver City, reports from Angeleno friends dictate our first move: eat. The restaurants, they said, are where a Palihotel shines, though none had yet been to this new Los Angeles outpost. After a morning of travel, Mr Smith and I were both exhausted and hungry, and it being around midday, it seemed the stars were aligned to indulge in a lengthy, boozy lunch. And such a lunch we had in what felt much like a haven – both emotionally and by design – from the steamy, smoggy, traffic-riddled journey into and across the city, with surprisingly little of any worth to listen to on the radio. 

The hotel’s restaurant Simonette, which fronts the 1920s-built hotel, rolls seamlessly from indoors to an open-air courtyard – a perfect gesture to a city whose main USP, especially to us Londoners, was sunshine. We took a table outside, of course, one shaded by a mature carrotwood tree and I quickly ordered what proved to be one of the most refreshing glasses of Californian chardonnay I’ve ever had in LA. I let out an audible sigh of relaxation, which caught the attention of our neighbours at the next table: two women, both academics, who were themselves in the midst of a long lunch. They were already onto dessert – something creamy, like a tiramisu – but when our food came (Mr Smith had a warm grain salad with chicken, and I a classic Niçoise) they were so tantalised they ordered the two dishes as takeaway. ‘For my boyfriend,’ one of them told us, with a wink. 

Sinking into the banquette, my attention was drawn to the decor, especially the three-storey-high walls painted a commanding shade of oceanic teal. There was something gloriously enveloping about the open-air room, replicating the cool stillness of the subsurface sea – I felt like I was on some chic submarine with cushioned rattan chairs and table service. All of a sudden, the carrotwood tree and the bushes around me had appeared as if they were, instead, seaweed, and in this Under the Sea reverie I imagined I was Ariel’s bougie cousin or something. This place was truly an oasis and a destination in and of itself. Culver City is a neighbourhood in the midst of transformation; there are several well-appointed shops down the road, an intriguing small museum (the wildly bizarre Museum of Jurassic Technology), one or two excellent coffee shops… But Palihotel is the place to test the refreshing waters of what’s to come – it excels in that kind of relaxed LA cool where you might spot an A-lister, but there’s no pretentiousness whatsoever. (Mainly because anyone in LA can get away with wearing athleisure in this city, anywhere and at any time, so it’s a challenge to make anywhere feel too stuffy.)

By night, the vibe of my little deep-sea, pool-of-teal courtyard completely changed, effortlessly, like someone had flicked a switch. Returning to the hotel after an afternoon at El Matador Beach (praise be to the sun) and a dinner of cacio e pepe in Santa Monica, Simonette had been whipped into a frenzy. As it darn well should be. The city hotel is, in my opinion, at its best when it can manage to attract a swathe of trendy locals to its taps, rather than just a limited number of their guests and men with mistresses. The Palihotel did not disappoint, and I was forced to race upstairs for an outfit change so that I felt more in tune with the choir of stylish 30-somethings who all somehow seemed to know each other. (A fluke, I had thought, but the same crowd was mingling the next night, too.)

Utterly depleted after more of that chardonnay, Mr Smith and I flung ourselves into bed. You expect a hotel bed to be a cloud of comfort, and this heavenly king-sized one was definitely not an exception. You do get the idea that it’s probably business folk who take up residence in these urbane rooms – the style is sophisticated with no fussiness, and also we had one of those glass-wall partitions to the bathroom, which blurred the edges of privacy (quite literally). But, it was a thinker’s room too: on the bedside table there wasn’t a Gideons’ Bible, but Salinger and Burroughs. I didn’t have the energy to pick either up, but I appreciated the selection. Morning came, and it was time to judge the toiletries. And there’s nothing better to me than a spacious, tiled shower you can really splash around in, plus some kind of lush body wash that manages to perk you up and prompts a ‘God that smells good’ from your fellow Smith. Again, Palihotel delivered with its little bottles of bespoke soapy yumminess, with its warm earthy scent. 

Plus, there were friendly front-of-house staff, to boot, who always greeted us with a genuine smile; in this vast metropolis I really did find a soft spot for this stylish Culver City stay. After another night there, where I repeated the majority of the first night’s routine (we meet again, chardonnay), and Mr Smith and I were regretfully zipping off the airport, a blissfully quick 20 minutes away – lightning speed for LA, and not too much time to dwell on what we already missed.