London’s Second Mandarin Oriental Is a Sleek Temple of Quiet Luxury
The new location has just 50 rooms, secreted away in a discreet new build in ritzy Mayfair.
The Mandarin Oriental brand is well known and well respected in London, with a stately red-brick historic hotel sitting right on Hyde Park. However, with close to 200 rooms and a dominating presence on one of London’s busiest thoroughfares, it’s hardly a hidden gem. Enter Mandarin Oriental Mayfair, a secret hideout of sorts with 50 rooms and 77 branded residences. If the Hyde Park location is the old-world grand dame, then this is the sleeker, chicer little sibling, shying away from the public eye.
Mandarin Oriental Mayfair might be less showy, but it’s just as luxurious. While the hotel is a ground-up new build designed by renowned international architectural firm RSHP, Mandarin Oriental Mayfair takes up residence in one of the neighbourhood’s most prestigious and oldest garden squares, dating back to the early 1700s. The outside is inconspicuous, with a Vierendeel truss frame and minimum signage, but inside is a temple of high design, with a 14-metre-tall atrium and statement spiral staircase carved from the most exquisite seagrass-green Verde Ming marble from the mountainsides of China’s Hubei Province and Liaoning Province.
Filled with natural light, this area is home to chef Akira Back’s first U.K. restaurant, though the telegenic chef is well known globally thanks in part to appearances on Food Network’s Iron Chef America. Still to come is a rooftop bar and a 14-seat tasting menu outpost of Back’s Dosa restaurant, a revival of the now-closed Michelin-starred original in Seoul.
Guest rooms are a well-designed delight by Studio Indigo. There’s not much by way of views, but artisan craftsmanship is on full display with swirls of burl wood and travertine flourishes, Asian-inspired sliding screens in gold, and detailed hand-painted silk wallpaper by House of de Gournay (a floral chinoiserie motif inspired by the magnolia trees of Hanover Square).
The hotel’s public spaces also catch the eye. With a dazzlingly lit indoor swimming pool stretching 25 metres (one of the largest in Mayfair hotels), the subterranean spa is a refuge of restorative remedies using all-natural Seed to Skin Tuscany products, created on a farm and estate in the Italian region. Try a personalized treatment with a scented candle massage and facial mask with activated charcoal and volcanic clay. Mandarin Oriental’s holistic signatures are also available, like the Oriental Qi massage, which draws on traditional Chinese medicine by focusing on the body’s meridians.
Every Mandarin Oriental has its own unique fan representative of the location. Here, the hotel’s fan is by Vivienne Westwood, crafted by hand from wood sourced from a London plane tree that fell in a storm in nearby St. James’s Park. The framed fan hangs in the hotel’s foyer, and the punchy red-and-blue design is replicated on the hotel’s bag and handmade chocolates.
The Mandarin Oriental brand is also introducing a third London property, slated to arrive in the next few years in South Bank, close to the famed Tate Modern Museum.
