Wildcard
Dopamine overdrive.
There’s nowhere like it in London and Lavender’s Blue gets around. Milión in Buenos Aires has a similar vibe but only just. The Mandrake Hotel is an Eastern Mediterranean cultural and culinary immersive experience really like no other. Its owner is from Beirut, that other city of creative energy. An unassuming red brick façade on London’s Newman Street gives little away: just the wryness of a white arched eyebrow pediment. A ground floor elevational aperture frames a dark passageway leading into the great unknown. Black is the new black.
On a patrician evening in England.
Fitzrovia is an oasis of civility between the retail chaos of Oxford Street and Tottenham Court Road. Charlotte Street is where most of the restaurants are clustered. Newman Street has a mix of uses. The 34 bedroom hotel is opposite Pontone Gallery and Zari Gallery and a few buildings up from Eclectic Gallery. Art is at the heart of the hotel. Founder and owner Rami Fustok’s art collection includes pieces by his sculptor mother Bushra Fakhoury and painter brother Malec. His sister Tala designed the internal spaces of the hotel.
Heat resonates from the canvases.
Decadent, dramatic and darkly seductive (but never dank), Tala’s design lives up to the hotel’s name. Mandrake is a perennial herbaceous plant belonging to the nightshade family. It’s native to the Mediterranean and Levant regions. Forked taproots resembling human form have long inspired medicinal myth and magic. The courtyard with its first floor Jurema Terrace is a luxuriant jungle, an enchanted forest. Forget green walls: this is green volume. Faces towards the sky. Paintings and photographs all around celebrate the human form. Fusion creatures by Cuban taxidermist Enrique Gomez de Molina include an ostrich cum alligator looming over the dining tables. The curiosities have escaped from the cabinet. A labyrinthine basement corridor covered in New Yorker Harif Guzman’s monochromatic street art leads to a bathroom masquerading as a miniature sculpture park.
Vanishing vapours.
Yopo Zaytoun is the hotel restaurant overlooking the verdant courtyard. A definite rustling in society. Yopo is a perennial tree native to the Caribbean and South America traditionally used for making psychoactive snuff. Zaytoun is Arabic for olive. Director of Food and Beverage Tim Lang and Head Chef Viktor Yordanov together create the snuff that dreams are made of. Olive oil has its own dedicated menu with offerings from Cyprus, Greece, Palestine and Spain. Nazareth Early Harvest (a green virgin oil produced by local farmer Nassar Darawshi) on warm grilled flatbread is a course in itself.
Parties are so intimate mixing solitude and sociability.
The olive oil menu gives a handy lowdown: “Its polyphenols, oleocanthal and vitamin E provide powerful antioxidant anti inflammatory protection, helping shield cells from oxidative stress and chronic inflammation. Extra virgin olive oil also supports brain function, skin health, gut balance, blood sugar regulation and the absorption of vitamins A, D, E and K. By increasing satiety and replacing highly processed fats, it encourages healthy weight balance while supporting the immune system, joints, liver and overall metabolic health.”
Suffering the passion for beauty.
Viktor’s Eastern Mediterranean and Levantine cooking elevates the baby carrot to a fully mature dish (marinated in cumin, Greek honey and feta mousse) and inserts zaytoun into puddings (chamomile chocolate fondant with Manahi olive oil ice cream). He carefully enhances the flavour and texture and platescape of seafood dishes using carefully selected additions: prawn tartare (with apple and cucumber), scallop carpaccio (with grapefruit and sea fennel) and yellowtail crudo (with burnt lemon gel and green chillies).
Days a mere handbreadth.
It will soon be time to raise an Audax (Bombay Sapphire Gin, extra virgin olive oil, bergamot, olive leaf syrup, fennel seed and lemon) in the hotel’s Waeska Bar: come January, The Mandrake celebrates a decade of daringness, zaniness, surrealism and phantasmagory. Best of all, Yopo Zaytoun has partnered with SupperClub Middle East, the world’s leading luxury dining and lifestyle platform connecting members with exclusive privileges at premium venues globally. That saving allows for some Lavender’s Blue spending in the hotel basement’s unique boutique.
Cut the night.
