The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Travel
Get the royal treatment at Soho House Amsterdam
Rodney Bolt finds out why this new boutique hotel counts Harry and Meghan among its most ardent fans
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex recently slipped across to Amsterdam for a party to launch the new Soho House Amsterdam. It was by no means their first Soho House experience – the couple met on a blind date in a private dining room in the original Soho House club in London. The Duchess is reported to have had her hen party at Soho Farmhouse (appropriately), amid 100 acres of isolation in the Cotswolds, and she and the Duke are said to have joined in a Hallowe’en bash at a Soho House offshoot in Toronto.
The couple were absent from a society wedding attended by the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge on the same weekend. So what is it about the Soho House group that makes the Sussexes such big fans?
The three-day-long Amsterdam launch included celebrity guests such as actors Eddie Redmayne and Stanley Tucci. British journalists, who were also in attendance at the bash, filled their Instagram feeds with images of “eating, drinking, napping, dancing, boats and bikes”: a relaxed distillation of Amsterdam weekend life. Guests were treated to a canal boat trip – the ideal way to view Amsterdam’s historic gables and glimpse the city’s street life in comfortable detachment, and were guided on a night-time tour of the red-light district (an experience the Royal couple apparently declined).
The festivities included dinner of lobster-laden pasta followed by creamily rich tiramisu at Cecconi’s, Soho House’s Italian restaurant, which like the rest of the building sports original art deco features. Unlike other parts of the club, Cecconi’s is open to the public (when not hosting celebrities and royals). There’s a party atmosphere most days of the week with upbeat music under palatially high ceilings: the skylight roof above the bar hangs with plants, and tall windows at one end give a princely view over a canal.
Party-goers rose late for a sumptuously restorative Sunday brunch in the club’s private restaurant on the top floor. Guests then had plenty of time to flop out in the quiet club lounge, take in a movie ensconced in one of the huge plush armchairs of the private cinema, or be groomed and pampered. Party guests penitent of previous indulgence worked out in the gym, with the promise of dirty sports clothes being whisked away and laundered when they had finished.
The weekend weather gave forward peeks at a blustery autumn, as well as a few nostalgic glances back to summer sun, which would have allowed the Royal pair ample opportunity to sink into a sofa on the rooftop terrace, and take in 360-degree views across the whole of Amsterdam’s low-rise historic centre. Have-a-go Harry might even have braved the outdoor pool. Perhaps they gave a passing nod to Soho House Amsterdam’s near neighbour, a place where the mood would not have been nearly so shoes-off and fancy-free: the Royal Palace on the Dam.