AN INSPECTOR CALLS

NOBU in Shoreditch, east London, opened last Saturday — the first hotel in the UK from this trendy, no-carbs brand.

It’s a new and innovative building with overhanging floor slabs and a frayed edge on one side that makes it look as if the construction company has downed tools and buzzed off prematurely. This is a big opening for Nobu (143 rooms, 240-seat restaurant, sushi bar, 18-seat chef’s table), and it is different, clever and expensive.

We’re paying £275 without breakfast for the smallest category of room, knowing only too well that dinner will be a further £150.

The tried-and-trusted ‘east meets west’ theme is in full throttle, with wood screens that slide across sealed windows, squiggles on the concrete walls, sexy pink lighting, low-slung futon-type beds and cosy bathrooms that have gold rectangular basins. The joy of a hotel is staying somewhere radically different to your own digs. Job done.

Leaving my wife in the room, I go down to reception and tell a smartly dressed Frenchman that at these prices I expect a few bottles of complimentary water. He doesn’t only agree, but arranges for two glasses of complimentary champagne to be delivered by way of an apology. Impressive.

The corridors are black, gold and dimly lit. So dimly lit, in fact, that my wife can’t find the lift so takes the stairs instead and ends up first in the rubbish bin area, then in a laundry room where she is taken by the hand and led to the restaurant on floor -2.

It’s a fabulous use of space — the bar and restaurant that is, not the laundry room. The slinky bar is massive and there’s an open-air area split into terraces on four levels.

Staff are friendly and omnipresent, and though the whole confection is ‘of the moment’, you won’t feel out of place if you’re not quite ‘of the moment’. Just be prepared to pay £5 for a double espresso in the morning by way of a hangover. Nobu Shoreditch 10-50 Willow Street London EC2A 4BH 020 3818 3790, nobuhotelshoreditch.com Doubles from £249, room only