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Admiralty Arch, overlooking Trafalgar Square, is a really grand, grade I-listed monument. It really is a big old arch. Next to The Mall. It has a nose on it.
As you well know, a large structure can only exist for so long in London before someone builds a restaurant or a hotel (with a restaurant) inside it. This happy fate has befallen Admiralty Arch, which will hitherto be known as (*checks notes*) The Admiralty Arch Waldorf Astoria, London.
What this means of course is that the restaurant, which will be situated on the first bridging floor of the arch itself, will have views directly down The Mall towards (dramatic pause) Buckingham Palace. Imagine that. If, while eating your pudding, you unexpectedly caught the Queen’s eye from down the road do you think you would reflexively salute?
It’s the first time this room in the arch has been open to the public. In charge of the conversion has been architect Michael Blair, responsible for restaurants in gritty, salt-of-the-earth places like the Connaught, Claridges and the Ritz.
‘Admiralty Arch will be transformed into the finest hotel in London and the only one with such unique royal and political heritage dating back to the 1900s,’ screams the website. Most of us would probably reach for ‘one of the finest hotels in London’. Not these guys. This will be ‘the finest hotel in London’. You have to admire that kind of self-belief.
The hotel is apparently opening in 2022, so other details are currently a bit thin on the ground. It’s probably safe to assume the restaurant will serve the type of food known as ‘expensive’.
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