If you’ve ever been to LA, you may have visited the Chateau Marmont. In it, there’s a large balconied suite overlooking a garden restaurant. It’s the best room in the house, and if you haven’t been, you really should. If you’ve got a lot of work to do, you can stay for month-long swathes at a time, and accomplish pretty much anything. But probably, between sunning yourself at the pool with Keith Richards or chatting with very chatty American ingénues in the lobby, you won’t get much done.
You can have your own personal cook, and room service at 5am when you’re still up and and staring at the first rays over Sunset Boulevard. Everyone is friendly (they have to be), and there’s a sense that by staying there, you’re sharing in the history of something great, and by association are pretty damn cool to boot. The way Francis Ford Coppola is. Or Billy Wilder. Or Grace Kelly.
Now maybe, hopefully, and most scrupulously, you might have the same feeling when walking out of the lobby and into the eight-storey atrium of The Landmark London.
It was evening, and all of the lights came down to me from the balcony where a gentleman in white tie (he looked like George Clooney in the Martini ad) stood smiling at the world beneath his very smug fingertips.
I left the girlfriend who hadn’t showed for our date and went up to see what all the fuss was about. Now, you ask me about rooms at the Marmont, and I will say they ‘embrace the entire history of early Californian architecture, though the ambience today is distinctly mid-century romantic…’ or something like. At The Landmark, it’s all 21st century minimalism – ‘a nice joint, very therapeutic… no nasty surprises, which is most important…’ and carry on is such manner. It has all the marks of a five star ‘sumptous stay’; the ihome system, Nespresso machine, flat screen tvs, free Wifi, comfortable sofa, minimalist frescoes, and just enough light to flick a copy of Spectator or Conde Nast while my date is shown to a table beneath a swaying palm. I wish they had kept the horse-drawn carriage verve of the scene playing out downstairs. But it does do a good grooming kit in the sizeable bathroom – something the Chateau never quite got right.
But look, when you come here, come for a glass of Taittinger Rosé Champagne, the Vanilla crème brûlée, and the music in the Winter Garden. I mean it. You won’t want for anything more. I was in the Maldives last week, and I sat on the rocks staring at the pure, pure water, green like absinthe, and knew that such a moment was supposed to be perfect. But it wasn’t, as I had a melody of ridiculous requests that I wanted to make of the bar tender behind me, who ironically seemed to be having that perfect moment himself. But Mozart and Bach plucked on a harpsichord is most pleasing to the ear, and distract one from the compulsion to want oneself into a stupor; you are free to eat the Casterbridge beef without caring too much about the wild truffle sauce that accompanies it. Still, if you’re going to really go for it, have the Twice baked soufflé followed by the rack of lamb. She did, and she was very happy with it.
But listen, Sunset Boulevard or Marylebone Station – it often comes down to one dialectic. Do they have it in them to make you feel delightfully ordinary (if you aren’t), and yet somehow incredibly significant (we all are)? Could they make a film about you here, one where you ended up lying in a massive bath in a massive white marble bathroom, enswathed in Dom Perignon a la Dennis Hopper and a subtle smirk pasted across your well groomed face?
Marylebone Haunt The Landmark is a stayer.
The Landmark London offers 51 suites out of the 300 bedrooms available.
222 Marylebone Road, London NW1 6JQ,
Tel : +44 (0) 20 7631 8000
