Cafedraal is a restaurant and bar tucked away in the centre of picturesque Bruges. The restaurant specialises in traditional French-Belgian recipes with locally sourced ingredients. You can eat either in the 15th Century interior or outside in a popular terrace garden. The Lonely Planet website describes the restaurant as having “hip yet homely multicoloured rooms buzz with diners…
The Lydmar Hotel is a stylish five-star hotel on the waterfront in Stockholm. Trip Advisor’s 2012 Traveller’s Choice Awards listed the Lydmar as one of the top-25 hotels in Sweden. It has an informal and relaxed feel to it. They emphasise that the try to create this friendly environment rather than an over-stylised and slightly…
Newton Bar is a trendy establishment in Berlin named after legendary Berlin fashion photographer Helmut Newton. In tribute to him the walls of the bar are decorated with photographs he took of nude supermodels blown up to about 18 foot tall. The photographs dominate the look of the place with the rest of the bar…
The Hotel Arts is a luxury hotel on the Barcelona beachfront, built to coincide with the Barcelona Olympics in 1992. It’s five star hotel in a 44 storey skyscraper of a building which offers spectacular views of the town and the sea. The hotel has terraced gardens right beside Frank Gehry’s ‘golden fish sculpture’ which dominates…
Barts & Maggies Bar are part of the same group that own Bunga Bunga, see my previous review. BARTS is in the Chelsea Cloisters serviced apartments on Sloane Avenue. It’s a quirky speakeasy at the rear of the reception where you have to ring a bell to get in. Not sure they’ll see you through the peephole in…
Eskis is an interesting restaurant in Lyon serving really unusual food. In the Michelin guide it says “the young chef is curious about the world and delivers creative and ‘molecular’ cuisine”. The restaurant has similarities with Heston Blumenthal’s approach although it is a little bit more grounded in reality than the Fat Duck. Samuel Desjobert, the…
The Grill Royal is a super-stylish steak house in Berlin. Huge steaks are sourced from Australia, Argentina and the States. The restaurant has gained a reputation for attracting people who just come to splash their cash. In a Lonely Planet review it was put forward that ‘a platinum card is a good accessory at this look-at-me temple’.…
The Hotel Le Berger is a trendy boutique hotel, restaurant and bar located in uptown Brussels. It is an attractive art deco hotel in which each room is different. However, at the moment, despite this none of the rooms have disabled facilities. The narrow halls and stairways are also problematic for access. Word has it that…
Drayton Bar in Berlin is a cool bar with a 1920’s, clandestine, speakeasy vibe. It’s owned by Cookie which is something of a coolness institution in Berlin, owning several bars, restaurants and clubs, but at the same time having a very mysterious profile. The Drayton, in fitting with this image has been described by World’s…