‘Though the Philistines will jostle, you shall rankle with the apostles of the high aesthetic band; If you walk down Piccadilly with a poppy or a lily in your medieval hand.’
When WS Gilbert wrote these immortal lines from the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta Patience in 1881, Piccadilly was, in many regards, not so different to what it is now. Fortnum and Mason was there – a mere 174 years old, rather than the rather statelier 316 it now is – and the great bookshop Hatchards, which had moved to its current premises in 1801, was the place of choice for the London literarti, then and now. If you’d wanted to visit the Royal Academy, buy your cheese at Paxton & Whitfield or your perfume at Floris, you would have been able to do so. But what you would not been able to do is to stay at the Dilly, now or in its former incarnations.
The Piccadilly Hotel, as it was once known, first opened in 1908, and was one of the stalwarts of the area throughout the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. But in its latter-day incarnation as Le Meridien Piccadilly, it was seen as tired, below-par and certainly not a five-star hotel. A new owner and an impressive refurbishment later, it’s been reborn as the all-singing, all-dancing Dilly, which is trying to marry five-star luxury with a quirkier boutique hotel sensibility. But does it succeed?
When I walked into the lobby, I was struck by two things. Firstly, there’s an almost parodic Britishness to matters, with a giant red telephone box being one of the first things that greets you, and secondly it was remarkably busy. As the affable, wholly professional manager James Olivier informs me, the hotel was fully booked on my visit, and is usually so most days: a by-product, perhaps, of its relatively low room rates (a Classic room starts at £223, something of a bargain for an establishment in central London at these standards.) This does mean that the staff are faced with a very great deal of work, which, to their credit, they rise to the occasion of. From the splendidly affable doorman to the excellent Olivier, this is an exceptionally well-run hotel.
None of this would matter if the accommodation wasn’t up to snuff, but it entirely is. I’m on a seventh-floor ‘executive suite’, which sounds vaguely corporate but is anything but. It’s a spacious and stylish room, full of leather-bound books and with a reassuringly large and comfortable bed. There are lots of touches that lift this way beyond the norm, from the Floris products in the bathroom – the parfumier is situated nearby on Piccadilly – to the extremely welcome bottle of fizz that lurks in an ice bucket, all but shouting ‘Drink me’ at you. And one of the perks of being in a suite is that it grants you access to the Balcony at the Dilly, a lounge overlooking the ever-bustling front desk; here, you can sip Chapel Down in both sparkling and still varieties to your heart’s content.
You had better not take too much, however, as it will spoil you for dinner at Madhu’s, the hotel’s much-acclaimed Indian restaurant. Located on the ground floor, it is palatial in setting and generous in portions of traditional Anglo-Indian cuisine. While those of you who are looking for dishes that will reinvent the wheel may be disappointed, the quality of what’s on offer is extremely good. A sharing selection of starters includes perfect tandoori salmon and exquisitely seasoned lamb chops, while the old standards of murgh makhani and Kashmiri rogan josh are served to perfection for main courses, accompanied by a suitably soothing cucumber & carrot raita, and washed down most appropriately with an excellent bottle of Chianti. It makes for one of the most enjoyably unpretentious meals of this kind that I can remember having.
Breakfast the next day was not quite up to the same glittering standards, alas; the Terrace at the Dilly is an eye-catching spot, but the sheer number of guests means that it has a slightly conveyer belt-like quality to it, and the food on offer is typical fare. Yet the breakfasters seemed happy, and the pianist was a nice touch, even if her version of Coldplay’s ‘Trouble’ seemed a bit on the nose when a plate was smashed before my eyes by an over-eager diner. But then it was time to leave, and the omnipresent, ever-charming Olivier was keen to ask if I’d had a good stay. Like every guest, all I could say was ‘yes’. I shall look forward to walking down Piccadilly again soon, clutching my poppy or lily in medieval hand – and the Dilly will be my port of call, I trust.
The Dilly, 21 Picadilly, London W1J 0BH. For more information, including details of ‘Dance at the Dilly’, please visit www.thedillylondon.com.
