The Ham Yard hotel is the latest hotel coming from the Firmdale group. They're the people behind the Charlotte Street hotel and the Soho Hotel among others and this is their eighth boutique hotel - with a mix of traditional hotel rooms and apartments. If you're entertaining in the hotel, it has both a cinema AND a 50s style bowling alley.
And, of course, they'll be adding a new bar and restaurant, which could be a very handy destination, as it's just around the corner from Piccadilly Circus.
What you need to know about the Ham Yard Hotel
It'll have a big space for alfresco dining right in the heart of town. The hotel has a pretty big new courtyard, slap bang in the middle of town. Making the most of this space, they'll have 50 seats outside which will no doubt be a great place for alfresco dining and drinking if you need to escape from the shops. They'll be seating another 100+ inside with lots of banquette seating, linked to the terrace by floor to ceiling doors.
It's an all-day restaurant that will focus on British produce. For breakfast, alongside a Breakfast Martini. there are
- Chilli beans on toast;
- House-glazed smoked ham with eggy bread and grilled tomatoes
- Rarebit poached eggs and greens
- Hepburns black pudding bubble and squeak with eggs sunny side up.
Lunch and dinner dishes include pastas, steak, crispy duck and :
- Seared scallops with tempura courgette flower;
- Glazed candy beets with goat’s curd, mustard, orange and walnuts
- Ham hock, dandelion and parsley salad.
- Sea trout with samphire and mussels,
Desserts round everything off with blueberry meringue with lemon curd and poached lemon segments or coffee brûlée with cinnamon doughnuts.
There's also a separate bar with more small plates. Those plates include chorizo sausage rolls with rapeseed mayonnaise; barbequed octopus with pickled white cabbage; spring bean and white truffle salad; crispy chicken with green mayonnaise; hot salt beef melt with mustard mayo; truffled mascarpone melt with glazed smoked ham and pickles. They'll also have a range of sliders including beef and pork meatballs with tomato sauce and Parmesan, and crisp shredded duck with hoisin sauce. And if you're escaping the heat, there'll be ice cream sandwiches as well.
There's a cocktail club too. They say "members will receive a monthly cocktail mix that will be stored in individually named bottles and displayed in Ham Yard Bar".
Where is it? One Ham Yard, London W1D 7DT.
When does it open? 1 June 2014.
