Travel Hotel booms in Toronto and London, plus flights and cruises
TORONTO has been seeing a hotel boom of late, with Bisha opening in September and Hotel X set to revitalize the iconic Ontario Place space by the lake. But Riverside, a neighbourhood just east of the Don Valley, is on the hotelier set’s radar. The Broadview Hotel has opened in another iconic, somewhat notorious spot, Jilly’s Strip Club. When reimagining the original 1891 building, an example of Romanesque Revival style architecture, Toronto-based Streetcar Developments chose to maintain its facade, preserving the vintage feel. A boutique property with 58 rooms, the Broadview also fea- tures a restaurant and rooftop bar. thebroadviewhotel.ca
LONDON Across the pond, Michael Achenbaum of Gansevoort hotels in New York City and Turks and Caicos Islands has opened The Curtain, a hotel, private members club, dining and music venue in Shoreditch in London’s East End. The now chic but once edgy area known for artists’ lofts and a burgeoning tech community is also known for the Columbia Road flower market, vintage shopping down Brick Lane and noshing at Old Spitalfields market. For his first London outpost, Achenbaum has enlisted some serious globalgoes-Big Apple culinary cool with Ethiopian-born, Swedish-raised super chef Marcus Samuelsson, of Harlem’s famed Red Rooster. “Shoreditch has a mystique,” Samuelsson tells me, as I bite into his carbs-worthy cornbread. “You see British high and low here. The food scene is booming, the music scene is great, artists are everywhere. It reminds me of Harlem; it’s constantly changing.” The best part? Personal service and nary a whiff of hipster irony in the place. thecurtain.com —VV