Oscar Wildes place in London – The Cadogan Hotel / London / United Kingdom

We visited London and enjoyed the city.

Joy with lots of historical and literary spice, looking for the roots of Oscar Wilde at The Cadogan Hotel on Sloane Street.

The Cadogan is 4me pure English luxury. With its prestigious Knightsbridge address, The Cadogan is perfectly located on Sloane Street amongst famed designer boutiques such as Chanel, Gucci, Prada and Hermes and a short stroll to Harvey Nichols and Harrods. This luxury hotel in central London offers 64 elegantly decorated guest rooms and suites, along with a delightfully rich history.
It has strong links with Oscar Wilde, who was a frequent visitor of Room 118, where his infamous arrest took place.
Oscar Wilde got arrested here. It was in room 118.

To mark this turning point in Wilde’s fortunes, the hotel has created the ‘Green Carnation’ package, named after the dyed buttonhole Wilde was fond of wearing.

Guests can stay in Room 118:

which contains items such as a replica of his smoking jacket, and enjoy a bottle of his favourite pink Perrier-Jouet. There is also a menu dedicated to some of his gastronomic preferences – hock and seltzer, absinthe and, rather incongruously, Victoria sandwich sponge cake.

The Cadogan’s package includes a three-course evening meal which features more Perrier-Jouet and unlimited wine in Langtry’s Restaurant, part of the hotel that was once home to Wilde’s friend, the actress Lillie. And this set me up nicely for a weekend spent hot on Wilde’s polished heels around the city that bore him up and then tore him down.

Many of the places associated with Wilde have disappeared, but you can still reach many of them on foot – though Wilde would have disapproved of this as he preferred to take a hansom cab everywhere. A short walk away from The Cadogan is 16 Tite Street, where the playwright lived with wife Constance and their two sons. The house is not open but Wilde is said to have used one of the rooms that looks out on to the street in which to write. There is also the church, St James’s in Paddington, where the couple married in May 1884. To experience the most animated window on to Wilde’s London life, we joined guide Alan Titchard on a two-hour stroll to some of the writer’s haunts, many of them backdrops to the vicious spats between Wilde and the Marquess of Queensberry, father of his lover, Lord Alfred ‘Bosie’ Douglas. In Mayfair, we visited the site of the Albemarle Club – now an office block – where the Marquess left his infamously misspelled calling card ‘For Oscar Wilde posing somdomite’. It was Wilde’s decision to sue the Marquess for libel over the slant which precipitated his own downfall.

We also had a break at Royal Arcade in Mayfair, where Wilde used to buy his green carnations, and on St James’s Street found the wonderfully eccentric 18th Century James J. Fox Cigar merchant which supplied cigarettes to Wilde, a 100-a-day smoker.

The downstairs Freddie Fox Cigar Museum features a display of memorabilia dedicated to Wilde and famous smokers such as Churchill.

The walk also takes in the site of the now demolished St James’ Theatre, where Lady Windermere’s Fan and The Importance Of Being Earnest made their debuts.

It ends back in Piccadilly, opposite bookshop Hatchards, where Wilde had an account. From here, there are a number of places that he would have sanctioned to enjoy a dinner.

These include the imposing Langham hotel in Portland Place – the setting for a meeting in 1889 between Arthur Conan Doyle and Wilde where the seeds were sown for his novel The Picture Of Dorian Gray – and Kettner’s restaurant in Soho, where Wilde used a room upstairs.

Over the years, celebrities from Mick Jagger to John Lennon have been up before the beak in the oak-panelled courtroom but the only judgments being handed down now are those concerning the food.
Story about the hotel.
Built in 1887, the hotel was once home to Lillie Langtry, the famous actress and close friend of King Edward VII. It was here that her liaisons with the future King of England took place.
After she sold the house, Lillie continued to stay in her old bedroom, Room 109, which had become part of the hotel.

In recent years, the hotel has been reunited with Cadogan Estates, having been purchased by Earl Cadogan in 2011. This is the first time in The Cadogan’s history that the hotel has been owned by the family whose name it bears.

Things to do:
It would be churlish to leave the British Museum out of a list like this, even though its fame no doubt precedes it. Most visitors will make a beeline for the controversial Elgin Marbles – statues removed from the Parthenon in Athens – by way of the ever-popular Egyptian displays. But to say there’s much more to the museum would be an understatement. The endless series of galleries contain artefacts from just about every major civilisation on earth. The Enlightenment rooms in the east wing are particularly fascinating, and usually crowd-free. And, oh, that magnificent glass roof.

Resto tip #1: Gordon Ramsay

The kitchen here is cooking at very high Michelin star level, the main problem is getting a reservation. Our meal started with cheese gougeres, which are always a welcome way to start a meal. A lot of restaurants make these, but not so many do them well. They should ideally be served warm, have plenty of cheese flavour and of course the choux pastry should be very delicate. Bread is supplied from the Flour Station, a selection of white, brown, black olive, rosemary and slices of potato and honey bread. This was certainly very good, though I always think that bread should be made from scratch by a top kitchen.

Pumpkin soup was poured over roasted cep, ricotta cheese and Alsace bacon, with a bacon tuile on the side of the plate with pumpkin seeds as garnish. This dish was perhaps the least successful of the meal, the bacon flavour coming through nicely. Ballotine of smoked confit duck with pears (pickled, poached and pureed) was served with walnuts and pain d’epice. This dish had good balance, the acidity of the pear working well with the richness of the terrine.

A take on carbonara was made using soft hen egg yolk, smoked pomme puree, caramelised onions, Iberico ham, smoked bacon and onion consommé, topped with an emulsion of four year old Parmesan. This was a rich and comforting dish, it could be argued that there were a lot of flavours going on here, but it was yummy and delicious.
Scallop was cooked with with lardo di colonnata (pork lard from Tuscany) and served with apple, walnuts, celery and cider emulsion. The scallop had nice natural sweetness and was lightly cooked, the apple provided a balancing sharpness, but while this was an enjoyable dish the flavours did not really stand out for me.

The sea bass we had been pan-fried and served with rock samphire, Oscietra caviar and a veloute of caviar and oyster. The fish was excellent and accurately seasoned.

Pigeon with polenta was served with carrots and braised shallots and smoked ventreche, and a sauce made from dates and the cooking juices. The pigeon from Bresse was itself excellent, the sauce very good, and I admire anyone that can make polenta taste decent. However the star dish was pork done in five separate ways: a sausage using the shoulder, roast loin with crushed new potato, bacon and spring onion, pork belly served with apple, pig cheeks wrapped in Savoy cabbage with Dijon mustard, and ham hock with pineapple. This was accompanied by an apple puree and braised pork jus. This was a well-designed dish, the various elements of the pork coming together well as a whole, enough apple to give balance, and the cooking of the pork was technically superb; the sausage in particular had superbly deep flavour.

Pre-dessert was lime and apple sorbet with lime mousse and avocado, diced Granny Smith apple, eucalyptus and shiso (Japanese mint). This was a pretty and refreshing dish, the sorbet having excellent texture and the lime providing freshness.

We had fantastic wine. Clare Smyth is clearly a top class chef. Her cooking and own style have clearly developed since she took over the reins here, and the meal today was as good an overall culinary experience as you are likely to encounter in the UK. Chef Clare Smyth has been awarded ‘Chef of the Year’ by the UK Good Food Guide and Jan Konetzki has won ‘Moet UK Sommelier of the Year’ by Academy of Food and Wine Service.

London calling.

Cadogan Hotel

The next day got “Florence & the Machine” @ the Albert Hall. Amazing.