High Society: The Café Royal reborn

Read all about the Café Royal project in this article from Foodservice Consultant magazine:

Few places have the cachet of London’s Café Royal, so for SeftonHornWinch the refurbishment project represented a significant opportunity. Ken Winch gives Jackie Mitchell the inside story.

For Ken Winch FFCSI of SeftonHornWinch (SHW), the reopening of the legendary Café Royal in London’s Regent Street last December represented the culmination of four years’ work.

“Four years isn’t that unusual,” he says. “I feel huge relief that the Café Royal project is complete. I am most proud of the design, the quality of the installations, and the integration of new technology, such as the CO2 refrigeration and the vacuum waste system.” Café Royal is the first hotel in the world to use CO2 as a refrigerant.

Winch has a long association with the Café Royal, having played at the venue as a drummer in a dance band 30 years ago. One of London’s historical buildings, the Café Royal originally opened in 1865. In 2008, it was bought on a 125-year lease from the Crown Estate by the Israeli company Alrov Properties, run by Alfred and Georgi Akirov. It is the second hotel, after the Conservatorium in Amsterdam, to join The Set, the Akirovs’ new collection of hotels. And it forms the centrepiece for the massive Quadrant development by the Crown Estate, which is designed to revitalise the area.

The new, 159-room hotel, including six suites, has been designed by Sir David Chipperfield, with historic restoration work by Donald Insall Associates. Chipperfield, known as a minimalist, has updated the original theme of mirror, cast plaster and timber floors. “We took those elements and used them in a modern way,” Melissa Johnston, project director of David Chipperfield Architects, told The New York Times.