Art Entr’acte – 1
Girlahead is taking a break to look at unusual art. The piece above in the lobby of Claridge’s, London, is by Lynn Chadwick, 1915-2003, known for striking, bold, and sometimes angular sculptures. He was not necessarily a dominant force during his time. He was a refined taste, and that’s what Claridge’s is all about. Dine as Girlahead did in the hotel’s lobby lounge, and you’re surrounded by photos of the great and good. And if you can recognize who they are, you’re probably over a certain age. And yet the average age of the diners when Girlahead was all over the place: there were at least half a dozen baby buggies, even at dinner time, possibly a littlr extraordinary for a hotel of such eminence.
The hotel boss, Thomas Koch, however, has the ability for making everybody at every age feel thoroughly part of the scene. Claridge’s, which is part of Maybourne, is famous, inter alia, for five floors underground, dug in the last five years by Irish workmen, by hand because they, and Maybourne, didn’t want to disturb the people above. Those subterranean spaces include now an art gallery, a bakery, and lots of backup things. Plus, it is rumoured there could be another restaurant, but yet, do they want yet another restaurant?
It has just been announced that the main Claridge’s restaurant is going to be taken over. As of next month, Dante, the Aussie-US phenomenon that started with Lynden Pride and his wife Natalie Hudson’s 2015 take-over of a Greenwich Village café, will have a significant London outpost. Under the pair, Greenwich Village won 50 Best Bars in the World in 2019, and it’s now already in Los Angeles, where it has the rooftop of Maybourne Beverly Hills. Girlahead predicts it will do great in Claridge’s for three reasons. Anything Italian does well. Anything at Claridge’s does well. And anything with Dante attached to the name seems to do well.
Simon Scoot, Chief Commercial Officer of Maybourne – here, below, with Maybourne’s long-time and equally highly-revered communications genius, Paula Fitzherbert – undoubtedly has yet another triumph on his hands. And this coming Monday, 18 May, The Newt in Somerset opens a decorative ‘London farm’, filling Claridge’s public spaces and some of its menu items (pre-Dante) with tens of thousands of blemish-free green Somerset apples. The art of food is indeed one of many other arts that are associated with Claridge’s.
