Spicers Potts Point

Salt clings to the crust. The four cheeses inside are sharp and creamy, and its brown-paper wrap is spotted with gooey, gorgeous grease. Above me, a (framed) note on the wall reads: 'The cheese toastie was the best I’ve ever tasted! Warmest regards, Liam Neeson.' I am, of course, biting into Potts Point’s most famous delicacy, made to order by Penny at her eponymous fromagerie. And to think, this is only the second-best thing in Potts Point.

I'm awarding the suburb’s top prize, unsurprisingly, to Spicers Potts Point — because the only thing that rivals my love of cheese is my love of hotels, and this one is a particularly fine specimen of the genre. I’d already had enough conversations with luxury-minded locals to know that Spicers was the staycation brand of choice: many Sydneysiders and Brisbanites flock in pursuit of the brand's rural resorts, dotted among hinterlands and wine valleys and mountain ranges around the east coast. But I didn’t need a break from Sydney; I needed a soft landing in a lively location, and a staff who might take some of the associated loneliness out of a solo stay. I needed the only Spicers property in the city itself. 

Despite arriving after dark, Phillip at reception was in no rush to shut up shop — no, no, we’d chat about my time in London, his former life in Hong Kong, how we’d both ended up here. When I mentioned I was venturing out for a bite, I got the full lay of the land and some added reassurance on the neighbourhood’s safety credentials, a thoughtful addition, I felt, given the ‘solo female traveller’ of it all.

I was reminded of my first real solo trip, to Tenby, Wales. My boyfriend at the time had absconded to Thailand for an indefinite trip that decidedly did not include me (a story for another time) and I decided, rather than wallow, I’d have an adventure of my own. In Tenby. In the persistent, pouring rain. The miserable affair was redeemed only by my duck-egg blue B&B, the owners of which immediately assumed the role of my emergency contacts, my very temporary custodians. Spicers Potts Point, right down to the duck-egg blue, is the closest thing I’ve experienced to it since. 

After I returned from supper (another Potts Point delicacy: the pork katsu buns from Cho Cho San, a mere five-minute walk away), I found Phillip in cahoots with another pair of guests, chatting about that night’s supermoon, best viewed, so experts had declared, at 4am. We joked that we’d see each other out front for the viewing party, and I felt it again — that B&B-ified warmth, a cosy vibration that would reach its peak, as it so often does, during easy conversations about the weather at breakfast. 

This chain hotel is imbued with a guesthouse quality, assisted by its locale. We’re on a quiet, largely residential street, where parents bundle prams into Victorian townhouses and thirtysomethings haul their supermarket shopping into low-slung, art deco-fronted flats. The hotel occupies not just one of Victoria Street’s many townhouses, but three of them. Our trio is painted in a creamy sage, struck through with an ornate wrought-iron balcony (a perk exclusive to the hotel’s three Victoria Terrace Suites). Its façade is peppered with potted plants and there’s a small front porch with a sofa — the same spot where I’d finish my Liam Neeson-approved toastie the following day.

From the entrance, a slip of hallway leads to the reception desk, behind which shelves of Aperol are braced for complimentary guest spritzes. On the reception, a bowl of apples and a cloche covering jam-filled biscuits. Art — largely of the oceanic persuasion — is just about everywhere. There are squiggly, sea-harbour abstractions from John Olsen and sun-dappled, underwater bodies by Martine Emdur, the latter bringing a fabulous peek of bums and boobs to an otherwise straight-laced decor. I recall my mother telling me to paint my bedroom blue, something about it being the most soothing colour. She wasn’t wrong.

My room is cast in this same sense of calm and appears, at least to me, roughly 100 times bigger than it had looked when I booked it online. And while many hotels tend to whack a yoga mat in the wardrobe, this is one of the first times I’ve felt inclined to use it — if only to give all the floor space something to do. In my Luxe King room (emphasis on the Luxe), I have a bath tub in my preferred spot — right by a window, where I can soak in the natural light. Although, when a wide-eyed neighbour almost got a Martine Emdur painting out of me, I made a note to lower the blinds next time. Come morning, my alarm clock was superseded by the boom of a nearby ship, and I couldn’t help but admire the commitment to the nautical theme.

And now to the only thing I loved more than my bed: breakfast. It was served in a skylight-drenched dining room, flanked by a small library nook. I liked it even more because it delivered the excuse to chat to Lana, my lovely, familial server. But in the end, it was the tiny details doing the heaviest lifting — the miniature muffin on the side of my hot Earl Grey tea; the slice of dehydrated orange that bobbed in my juice; the satisfying twirl of the extra-crispy bacon, just as I’d requested. I had to wonder, if I left a note saying it was the tastiest bacon twirl I’d ever tasted, would they frame it? A reviewer can dream.