Mayfair may be best known for its famous Bond Street—a mecca of designer shopping, from Chanel, Prada, and Gucci to Cartier, Tiffany and Britain’s own royal stationers Smythson, stretching from Oxford Street and all the way south to Piccadilly. But this neighbourhood’s most recent buzz has everything to do with the exciting new openings happening far away from the madding crowd.
The pandemic gave many of the area’s most glamorous luxury hotels the chance to renovate and reinvent. The two-centuries-old Claridge’s on Brook Street is leading the way with its ambitious expansion, digging down five storeys to accommodate new swimming pools, a spa and cinema, and on top, a rooftop penthouse. The Beaumont Hotel added the new Le Magritte cocktail bar and terrace and all-day-dining Gatsby’s Room bar; and The Connaught opened its own patisserie, where crowds queue daily for the hotel’s Executive Pastry Chef Nicolas Rouzaud’s intricate, spectacular creations, from a classic Paris-Brest to his Connaughty Hound, a mousse-filled cake in the shape of the hotel’s emblem (its flavours and appearance change with the seasons).
A myriad of new boutiques, restaurants, and cafés and McQueen’s flower shop are flourishing and drawing a younger crowd along the little arteries of North Audley, Duke, and James Streets, lined with the area’s distinctive terracotta-hued Victorian mansions. These feed off leafy Grosvenor Square—where the former American embassy is currently being given new life as the Chancery Rosewood hotel (due to open in 2024). To the east, a stone’s throw from Oxford Circus, the newly pedestrianised Hanover Square (Mayfair’s oldest garden square) is now home to The Maine Mayfair, a jazzy ensemble of generous brasserie, tavern, bars, and a secluded outdoor terrace, and other developments such as the new Bond Street Crossrail station stop and the Mandarin Oriental Mayfair soon to follow.
So in Mayfair today, anything goes: Here, the newly revived Langan’s Brasserie near Green Park (once owned by Hollywood heavyweight Michael Caine) and much-loved old school favourites, from Scott’s to The Guinea Grill, happily jostle alongside groovier outposts such as Sketch (its pink-swathed Gallery, decorated with British illustrator David Shrigley’s quirky, offbeat monochrome illustrations and witticisms, is still one of the most sought-after spots for afternoon tea), and the area’s latest and very swish members club Maison Estelle, founded by Sharan Pasricha and his wife Eiesha (the power couple behind The Hoxton Hotels and Gleneagles).
But it is the ever-evolving façade of Annabel’s, another of the area’s members club, which sums up the irreverent, eccentric and, let’s face it, quite often bonkers new aesthetic best. From being decked out like a gingerbread house at Christmas to being festooned with giant-sized parrots set within a tropical paradise in the summer, it’s a shining example of how Mayfair’s old-world and stuffier sensibilities are truly a thing of the past.
WHERE TO EAT & DRINK
BiBi
Mayfair’s newest kid on the block, Bibi —Urdu for ‘lady of the house’, in tribute to chef Chet Sharma’s grandmothers—is a warm, welcoming, and stylish sliver of a restaurant on North Audley Street. Sharma brings together memories of his family’s Punjabi dishes, flavours that pack a powerful punch, and the traditional ‘sigree’ method of grilling over coals together with the modern inventiveness of leftfield ingredients and cutting-edge techniques learnt while developing dishes for venerable Michelin-starred outposts such as Simon Rogan’s L’Enclume in Cumbria and San Sebastian’s Mugaritz. Here, the sensations of sweet, sour, spicy and salty collide in ‘chaat’ street food sharing plates like the addictive Wookey-hole Cheese Papads (a posh Quaver, in British terms, perhaps for the Americans, more like a larger, flattened Cheeto) served with a fragrant emerald green coriander and mint cream topped with preserved mango, to mains such as Lahori chicken marinated in a cashew and yoghurt whey, laced with grass-fed ghee, and the fluffiest, lightest Kaima Yakhni Pulao rice. 42 North Audley Street, 020 3780 7310
The Red Room at The Connaught
London’s latest and possibly most extraordinary looking bar has interiors designed by talent du jour Bryan O’Sullivan—think the Flintstones meets César Manrique’s Lanzarote architecture meets the elevated but cosy comfort of a contemporary art collector’s home (O’Sullivan has also designed Claridge’s new The Painter’s Room, featuring murals and stained glass created with British artist Annie Morris). Taking advantage of Coravin technology, the bar serves thousands of wines by the glass, including rarities such as a 1994 Petrus Merlot and 2016 Montrachet Grand Cru chardonnay. Try the bar’s oenophilic riff on classic cocktails, such as ‘Red’, which teams Darroze Armagnac with Beaujolais and is then lightened with a vine leaf cordial and bergamot sherbet; or the refreshing ‘White’, which mixes Tanqueray gin, Sancerre, and grapefruit juice. Bar snacks include truffled ratte potatoes and crispy pillows of deep-fried rice topped with silky sashimi salmon. The Connaught, Carlos Place, 020 7314 3403
Hide
There is little more perfect—or pretty—than the dishes chef Ollie Dabbous and team serve at Hide, a restaurant collaboration with Hedonism Wines, which is spread across three floors (including a cellar wine bar in the basement), located on the Mayfair side of Piccadilly not far from the area’s charming Georgian Shepherd’s Market. Against a striking interior of smooth concrete, grainy stone, hints of bronze and botanically-themed bas-relief plaster walls, the restaurant’s expansive floor-to-ceiling windows afford year-round Green Park views. Here, Dabbous and his team bring a light touch to all-day-dining dishes, from a truffled Croque Monsieur (or Madame with a fried egg) or smoked eel, leek, and potato glazed omelette at breakfast, to delicate soft-shell crab tempura infused with Thai basil & green peppercorns, and kohlrabi flavoured with pear, elderflower, perilla, and pine at lunchtime. Barbecued Anyhoe Park venison or Lake District lamb, Cornish caviar and oysters, and Scottish heather honeycomb (Hide emphasizes ingredients sourced from around the British Isles) are served at the tables with the best bread basket in town—Norwegian sourdough with seeds & apple; black truffle and roast mushroom focaccia, fried pumpkin bun with warm spices, and mustard & mature cheddar baguettes. 85 Piccadilly, 020 3146 8666
