"Despite the Ace Hotel’s departure from the city, there’s something of a USA revival going on in London, with The Standard landing in King’s Cross and the Mondrian just launched in Shoreditch. And earlier this year, the first NoMad outside the States opened in a palatial former magistrates’ court opposite the Royal Opera House. It came with some expectation – after all, the original put a whole New York City neighbourhood on the map, its Dirty Martini-fuelled bar an overnight sensation – but has hit the ground running. The centrepiece restaurant, in a luminous, almost neoclassical atrium draped with greenery, was booked up for weeks, a see-and-be-seen destination. There’s plenty of showmanship here, but it’s more Noël Coward than PT Barnum: vintage chandeliers, brass and crimson, mohair and damask, mural painters from the opera house involved in the decor. In the bedrooms, bathrooms nod to golden Twenties Art Deco and the main spaces to a sort of transatlantic connoisseur spirit, with big-brushed abstract expressionism propped up on the floor, Hopi kachina dolls beside the fireplace and a blend of Victoriana and art history on the walls (we perhaps have hotelier Andrew Zobler’s grandmother, who owned an antiques shop, to thank for this). The Library bar has shelves and shelves of books, though the prominent criminology section can’t match a tour of the adjacent new Bow Street Police Museum, birthplace of London’s first force, which has seen the Krays, Oscar Wilde and Emmeline Pankhurst pass through its cells. Shakers rattle like sidewinders in the tavern-esque Side Hustle, mixing up fancy American-style cocktails. This is a big-thinking but surprisingly intimate hotel that deserves a standing ovation." - Condé Nast Traveller, Steve King
