The new bar
It certainly helps when luxury hotels have owners who possess both passion and pennies, and Four Seasons Hotel Hampshire fortunately fits into that category. Since the gal’s last visit there is a new squire of the scene, Andrew Harrison, who has swapped the lightweight linen of Langkawi for oh-so-traditional tweeds of the English countryside. He showed off his splendid Royal Suite, #4007, recently re-done by Martin Brudnizki – see the video, below. He also beamed when introducing the second, family, pool, themed as Sharkie’s Reef by Justin Pook, who creates for Disney and Warner Brothers. See the photo above: the coloured buckets of water are constantly upending, soaking those below. Kids love this so much that they leave the original pool to adults. There is much for them to do here. They can walk the resident dog, Oliver Beckington, and learn to ride, and just generally run around the 580-acre estate.
Andrew Harrison
The 7,000-tree woodland is being complemented by the addition of 200 heritage produce trees, damson and medlars and so on. And, inside, the restaurant and bar seen has been brought completely up to date, again thanks to Brudnizki creativity. The former restaurant has been doubled in size, pushing out into the garden in a way that makes its rooftop an enormous terrace for suite #4007, above. The new restaurant, Wild Carrot, is big enough to breakfast all 133 rooms in the hotel – it has varieties of seating types, and flows sideways into a really comfortable bar lounge, with central counter. Paolo Belloni, who had last been cooking at Four Seasons Beijing, produced a colourful Wild Carrot salad, with truffle dressing, and then I had to leave this country-house luxury hotel, longing to come back. WANT TO SEE ROYAL SUITE #4007? CHECK THE VIDEO BELOW
