Since visiting the reincarnation of London’s Old War Office, now a gastronomic palace incorporating a hotel known as Raffles at The OWO, I have a new favourite Winston Churchill story. There are hundreds of great tales about our wartime Prime Minister, and many are even true – but this is the only one that has been recounted to me while standing in its subject’s former quarters. When World War II ended, the PM apparently sent two telegrams: one to the House of Commons, to announce the good news; the other to Berry Bros & Rudd, ordering 40 cases of Pol Roger Champagne. Government may have been happier with their missive than the wine merchant ultimately was: apparently, the 480 bottles were never paid for.
This may be history or fable (and Berry Bros have no record of it, although Churchill certainly bought from them and drank his considerable weight in Pol Roger), but there was nothing fantastical about the sumptuous Churchill Suite, with its grand desk, ancient fireplace, original oak panelling and 1930s wallpaper. This was once the Council Room and MI5 and MI6 were both born here; a great excuse for the people who took on this mammoth and complicated refurbishment to install a ‘secret’ Spy Bar in the basement, which is reserved for residents and hotel guests.
I won’t say too much about its décor, as that would spoil the surprise (photos are banned), but OWO wine director Vincenzo Arnese had a lot of fun with the spy theme, listing Château Angélus 2007 – a special cuvée created in honour of the wine’s three appearances in Bond films – and The Macallan James Bond 60th Anniversary Edition, as well as wines by the great Morgon winemaker Jean-Marc Burgaud, who is also a Bond fan and has named his Côte de Py Reserve James. Oh – and lots of Champagne by the glass. ‘I went a bit crazy,’ Arnese admits sheepishly, but Bond would surely have approved – as would Churchill, whose ‘medical letter’ – intended to ensure his supply of alcohol when visiting Prohibition-era America – sits in the typewriter at the entrance.
There are two other bars, including Kioku Bar, a delightful nook with a record player and sake sommelier Anthony Yukio your friendly guide to 140 different sakes, including 25 by the glass, selected by supremely talented sake master Natsuki Kikuya. It’s the longest sake list in the UK and possibly in Europe. Upstairs, Kioku by Endo, an elegant rooftop eyrie by the third-generation sushi master Endo Kazutoshi, has access to the same list, although it tends to be a lot busier.
Several of the other restaurants are overseen by three Michelin-starred chef Mauro Colagreco. Saison, his more casual outlet, has a glass ceiling (it was once a courtyard) and trellising up the walls to protect the original ceramic tiles. This gives a summerhouse feel that chimes well with the menu’s Mediterranean theme. Nobody would mistake central London for the Riviera (not yet, anyway) but sitting here on a sunny day with a sea bream carpaccio and a glass of Dell’ Erba Pigato – a white grape found in the prettily named Riviera Ligure di Ponente area near Italy’s border with France – it becomes easier to believe that such a place exists.
The importance of this site a cigar’s throw from the river Thames goes back beyond 1530, when King Henry VIII requisitioned it from Cardinal Wolsey; as a royal palace – Europe’s biggest, until Versailles overtook it – it came to be called Whitehall. By the time the current building opened in 1906, that building was long gone, destroyed by fire in 1698. Its replacement is also magnificent. That central staircase, atop which Churchill, as Secretary of State for War 1919-21, used to address his underlings, is made from Carrera marble, of such quality it is almost translucent; the pale walls are Portland stone. The new digs were, presumably, a great relief to the War Office staff, who were previously across the road in Cumberland House, a building so unsanitary (it sat atop a cesspool) that it was said to be as dangerous a posting as any military campaign.
A ‘secret’ Spy Bar in the basement is reserved for residents and hotel guests
The hotel has capacious corridors, wide enough for children to cycle through – which they did, during World War I, carrying messages between departments. There are 120 rooms, of which more than half are suites. Those on the second floor, which have 14-foot ceilings, were previously the generals’ offices: just high enough to avoid the lift, for those wary of newfangled technology. One of those original lifts, its walls replaced with glass, still operates, and rising through the building feels like ascending through layers of history. Other lifts are more modern, including one down to the ballroom big enough to accommodate a car, which feels very 007.
A more useful update, I would argue, is the superb wine list of 1,500 bottles, some obvious, many less so and a few just plain decadent: order a glass of Louis XIII Cognac (another Churchill favourite, apparently) in the Guards Bar and it will be poured from a Mathusalem displayed atop a specially designed pedestal housing snifters. Also by the glass, Gusbourne English Sparkling Rosé 2019 jostles for space with four Champagnes (including Pol, of course). And naturally, since this is a Raffles Hotel, the cocktail menu features a Singapore Sling, created in the original Raffles in 1915, when Churchill was busy messing up the Dardanelles campaign. I am less keen on sweeter cocktails than I was aged 19 when, as a backpacker in south-east Asia, I spent what felt like a vast sum on this blend of gin, pineapple juice and Benedictine, and I still recall the subversive thrill, in a city where littering is a serious crime, of cracking peanuts and throwing the shells on the floor (permitted uniquely in Raffles’ Long Bar). Nobody would try that in London, but I spotted several Slings around the room, glowing as scarlet as the jackets of the beaver-hatted Palace Guards just across the road.
Amid the calm beige elegance of Mauro Colagreco’s signature restaurant, Arnese’s antic spirit has lit a few firecrackers. Yes, the list offers the expected reams of Champagne, Bordeaux and Burgundy – but there is also an entire page of sparkling wines that have spent time underwater. The Exploration Route wine pairing is deliberately esoteric but astutely matched to Colagreco’s inventive menu, where vegetables get headline billing and, between courses, a trolley heaped with seasonal bounty is wheeled around the tables to be admired. A dry Riesling, Hermann J Wiemer Vineyard 2022, comes from Seneca Lake, USA, and its hint of aniseed was perfect with fennel, poached scallop and fresh cobnuts; Peller Estate Cabernet Franc Icewine accompanied strawberries and dulce seaweed ice cream and was as pleasing to the eye as to the palate, glowing ruby against the tablecloth in an echo of the dessert’s layers of berries and white chocolate. For our main course, the route was left up to us: a mischievously smiling Arnese proffered cards with maps of Italy, France and China, each hiding an appropriate wine. An exotic adventure, for our aubergine with salt marsh lamb, or a comforting trip to familiar terrain? I’m not telling what I chose, but for a lifelong Londoner, this delicious visit to The OWO was both.
