Claridges

Brook Street’s grandest address has been serving afternoon tea in the same art deco foyer for the better part of a century, and the room still does the heavy lifting that makes Claridge’s feel different from every other five star hotel in Mayfair. Lalique glass panels, a sweeping staircase with a brass banister polished daily, and more recently a Dale Chihuly chandelier suspended above the Foyer, combine into a genuinely distinct sense of place rather than generic luxury.

Afternoon tea is the entry point for most visitors who are not staying, and it needs booking weeks in advance, particularly around Christmas when the hotel’s decorations become a minor London event in themselves. Finger sandwiches, warm scones and a rotating list of pastries arrive with a pianist playing nearby, and at just past a hundred pounds a head it sits at the pricier end of the London afternoon tea circuit, though few rival the setting.

Rooms and suites lean traditional, high ceilings, antique furniture, marble bathrooms, with the hotel’s restaurant space having cycled through several high profile chefs over the years. The bar programme, particularly the Fumoir, has a strong reputation among serious cocktail drinkers in its own right. Guests staying in the hotel range from long time regulars who return every year to first timers treating a night here as a landmark occasion in itself, and the staff manage both with equal warmth.

Service throughout is formal in the classic English hotel manner, attentive without being intrusive, and the doormen and concierge are frequently singled out by guests as the standout of the whole stay.

The honest caveat is that this formality and grandeur come at a genuine premium, rooms regularly running into four figures a night, and anyone hoping for a more relaxed or contemporary hotel experience will find Claridge’s determinedly old fashioned by design. It is not trying to be modern, and if that traditionalism is not what you want from a Mayfair hotel, there are more current alternatives nearby.