KING AND CONQUEROR
The debut hotel from London restaurateurs Corbin & King honours the transatlantic spirit and aesthetics, and the service credo of a bygone age.
The debut hotel from London restaurateurs Corbin & King harks back to a bygone age
Jeremy King cuts a fine figure as he makes his daily rounds at any one of his seven highly regarded restaurants in London, from The Wolseley on Piccadilly to Chelsea local Colbert. He is warm and reassuring as he greets guests with a handshake or light banter about their visit — the personal touch synonymous with the restaurant group he runs with Chris Corbin, which rose to fame in the 1990s with The Ivy and Le Caprice. It’s now at the heart of the pair’s first hotel venture, The Beaumont, which opened two years ago in sophisticated Mayfair. “Put your heart into it, give it soul, treat guests like we want to be treated” has been the ethos of Corbin & King for 35 years, echoed here in every last detail. “I had in my mind’s eye a clear notion of the sort of hotel I wanted to open because it was the kind of hotel I wanted to stay in,” says King. Located in a former Selfridges parking garage built in 1926, the hotel and its Manhattan gentlemen’s club vibe owes much to a fictitious character King concocted: Jimmy Beaumont. “Our ideas for our restaurants have always been dictated by the buildings,” says King, but The Beaumont had no such history. So to guide his architect team, King devised a backstory: “Jimmy Beaumont is a New York small hotel owner in the late 1920s, frustrated with Prohibition, who moves to London to run a Mayfair hotel called The Beaumont,” King eulogises. “After Jimmy retires in the 1950s, a big hotel group takes over and runs it to the ground. When we find it, we take all the covers off and discover a real Art Deco jewel waiting to be restored.” The art, furniture and objets d’art help tell this story for the 73-room hotel, which includes a hammam spa and private dining. Wood panelling, parquet and marble flooring, cherry wood cabinetry, velvet upholstery and elegant rounded walnutbacked armchairs set the scene, as do murals of classic American sporting life and monochrome caricatures of prominent figures of the day by San Francisco artist John Mattos. Large 1920s panoramas of beach club scenes hang above the beds, old photographs of travellers line the lifts and original paintings from the era hang at every turn. With help from his wife, interior designer Lauren Gurvich, King has sourced everything — from the Art Deco cocktail cabinets and credenzas to the ornamental panthers and the books found in the rooms (“to read — not just for show”). Even the corridors were measured according to King’s arm-span. “Hopefully it feels real — each piece is here for a reason,” says King. “When I think I’ve done enough, I do a bit more.” This generosity of spirit is what makes Corbin & King unique — from crisp linen napkins to complimentary minibars and The Beaumont’s vintage Daimler available for a quick dash to Bond Street. British sculptor Antony Gormley’s three-storey Room on the hotel’s south façade — essential to meeting Westminster City Council and the Grosvenor Estate’s commitment to public art — is the hotel’s pièce de résistance. Both an artwork and a suite, Room was integral to the hotel’s design from the start and adds a tantalising, unexpected silhouette to an otherwise simple exterior. Inside is an oak-clad bedroom, just four square metres and 10 metres high, furnished with nothing other than a bed from which all you can see is sky. “Hotels are the places of dreams, transporting you to another world,” says King. “It’s our job to provide the catalyst for the experiences people want to have. I want our guests to lose themselves the minute they arrive, to feel like they’ve been swept up and their feet don’t touch the ground until they leave.”
When I think I’ve done enough, I do a bit more — CO-OWNER JEREMY KING