AN INSPECTOR CALLS
THE Pilgrm (yes, that’s the way it’s spelt) opened in November opposite London’s Paddington Station, and the plan is to roll out two or three more in the next couple of years. That’s confidence for you but, then, one of its directors set up the Zetter group and must have developed a taste for success.
It has 73 rooms: bunks, small, medium and large. The idea is to be super-trendy, with no real check-in desk, a first-floor lounge selling expensive cocktails ‘created’ by famous barmen you’ll never have heard of and breakfast dishes such as ‘tea-poached eggs with kimchi rice’.
We’ve booked a medium-sized room. Dread to think what a small one is like — and we’re paying £159 without breakfast.
Someone is having a laugh, and it’s not my wife who takes one look at the stained blind hiding the view of the next-door building, the absurd tin shelves on either side of the bed, the ridiculous pot plant hanging pretentiously on a wall, the teeny-weeny shower room, the stack of mags (including Noble Rot: sex & drugs & pinot noir) and concludes that we’re in a cell of sorts.
Come to think of it, the man who gave us our key did tell us we should walk through H Block to get to our M Block room.
No one in the lounge. I order a Negroni because it’s on the list, but they’ve run out of ingredients; my wife asks for some red chilli Biltong but they’ve none of that, either. A large glass of Soave is £12.25, a bottle of Beaujolais £44.
We order some spicy fish tacos and a plate of chicken and lentils. The food turns out to be the best thing of the night.
Shaving in the morning is hopeless. A shelf above the narrow basin makes it impossible to wash your face without sloshing water all over the floor and the only place to put a wash bag is on the loo.
But, hey, there’s a tiny piece of soap on a rope (‘a design classic’, says the blurb) which you are encouraged to take home as a memento of this self-conscious, overpriced new hotel in an area of London that its owners are banking on being up and coming.
The Pilgrm, 25 London Street, London W2 1HH
thepilgrm.com Doubles from £129