The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Travel
The BoTree A feast for the senses
Beautiful design and a huge calorie hit help Mark C O’Flaherty find his happy place in Marylebone
The moment my latte landed in front of me at breakfast, I knew it was going straight off to Instagram. I seethe at the idea of coffee served in a glass vessel, but this took the biscuit. It was a glass without a handle, and someone had designed a stem that sat off to one side. I don’t want asymmetry with my caffeine, or any kind of glass. It is hot liquid. Just throw it in my face, why don’t you?
The jury was in fairly fast from social media – this object was an abomination. I don’t think I have ever had so many DMs, so fast. It haunted me all day. Here is a new luxury hotel, a heartbeat from London’s Bond Street tube station and the Elizabeth Line, close to all the lovely stuff in Marylebone – and they go and do that.
There is a lot of “design” going on at the BoTree in Marylebone, almost all of it beautiful. There is, you may not be surprised to learn, an overall motif of flora and forestry – and most things that need handles have them. The mood is one of haute modernity.
The bedrooms have pale ridgedwood panels, monochrome marble and smile-inducing walls finished with abstract pink shapes. I had a corner room, with a balcony of Moorishgoes-Space-Age grids around it, and a view down to the HMV mothership on Oxford Street.
Hotels can, if they are done well, put you in a good mood – and this one did. It made me feel that great London feeling. I arrived before my husband, and talked about fashion photography over a glass of champagne with the woman at reception. I enjoyed it so much that we both forgot I was actually checking in. When I got to my room, I felt I was in a happy place. I love interiors that are overtly modern in a fresh (and well executed) way.
The BoTree has superb lighting, and glossy in-room gizmos. Surprising, then, that after dinner I tried to watch something on the television and found it was impossible. I don’t want terrestrial channels in 2024; I want to be able to stream immediately from my myriad accounts, but two different laptops offered nothing but a black screen on the room’s monitor when we attempted Chromecast.
But back to the good stuff, most notably downstairs, in LAVO, which would be a significant restaurant opening in London regardless of the hotel to which it is attached.
There are LAVOs in numerous cities around the world – siblings to Hakkasan and Yauatcha. If you can imagine an Italian relative of those restaurants, you are picturing the right kind of thing. It is glam and big, but still quite cool; not too Sexy Fish.
Because LAVO belongs to a business that employs more than 250 staff, it is legally bound to detail the calories per dish on the menu, which is always about as welcome as the photo album on your iPhone offering up a montage of memories punctuated with deceased loved ones.
Now, I am fat – and I try as much as possible to limit my consumption to well under 2,000 calories per day. There are indulgences (hence, fat), but I am always surprised when the reality is spelled out to me.
I started out fairly modestly here, with Hamachi crudo (483 calories), but the sommelier had opened a bottle of lagrein – a syrah-like grape varietal with which I was unfamiliar. It was rich and deep red, complex, fruitful and slightly spicy. Obviously, it needed a steak (1,785 calories) and I also really wanted a primi dish of pasta with wild boar bolognese and truffle (1,148 calories). I am abysmal at mental arithmetic, but by the time it came to asking meekly for “a single scoop of olive oil gelato”, it was game over. Dinner for three, for one.
But gorgeous. I regret nothing. Not even the latte next morning which, with the avocado on toast and the sausage on the side, immediately took me smashing through my calorie ceiling for the day. Maybe at some point in the brave new world of the BoTree, they can develop a version of Ozempic to circulate via the air conditioning.
Doubles from £690, including breakfast. There are 21 accessible rooms.