It’s 9.30am and I’m in the staff meeting at London’s Dorchester Hotel, the five-star Art Deco gem on Park Lane, favoured haunt of British and international royalty, prime minsters and presidents. The heads of departments – management, food and beverage, housekeeping, maintenance, security – are reporting on the fully booked day just gone and the fully booked day ahead. There’s a birthday party in the 500-seater ballroom, a wedding in the function rooms, several VIPs who require extra attention…
Until now, my contact with The Dorchester has been glancing. I’ve interviewed Samuel L Jackson, Dustin Hoffman, Diane Lane and Daryl Hannah here. Christopher Lee remembered the hotel being built in 1931. Last night, I stayed in one of its sumptuous suites overlooking Hyde Park, and ate a delicious Dover sole in the Brigadoon-themed Grill. The hotel has three other restaurants, including the three Michelin-starred Alain Ducasse. It has 197 guestrooms, 55 suites, three rooftop apartments costing up to £7,555 a night, and proudly claims that each guest is attended by three members of staff. Today, I’ll be one of them.
My day starts in the warren of kitchens. The chefs are still churning out morning repasts ranging from a full English to sushi. Downstairs, another team is already making thousands of finger sandwiches for afternoon tea. And the staff canteen, Chesters, is down here: there’s a map on the wall with a pin in each country represented among the 500-odd hotel staff. The doors leading to the public areas have full-length mirrors emblazoned with the hortatory phrase, ‘This is how our guests see you.’
It’s barely 10am but in his immaculate, stainless-steel lair the Grill’s head chef Brian Hughson and his team are in full preparation for lunch. Vast haunches of beef arrive, pommes soufflé puff up in boiling oil. As sous chefs clatter around us, Brian, a bluff Liverpudlian, gets me to make his emblematic dish of seared scallops, ‘cauliflower couscous’ and sardine pie. I roll fresh pastry and fashion a tiny oblong pie, grate raw cauliflower onto a plate, dust scallop slices with curry powder and flash fry them, arranging it all with a blob of sauce from a squeezy bottle. ‘Bloody hell, you’ll be wanting a job here!’ Brian shouts over the din, as I’m whisked upstairs, given a tailcoat, and installed behind the concierge desk.
If the kitchen was busy, the concierge desk is pandemonium. Peremptory guests appear asking to have letters posted, shirts pressed and bags collected. They want restaurant recommendations, a pub with Sky Sports… Some want to know why a 21-gun salute is being fired in Hyde Park. ‘You have to get rid of things quickly because so much comes in,’ says Harry Deasy, who has worked here for 20 years. ‘And our guests don’t like to hear the word “no”.’
Harry has had to arrange for a dead body (a guest’s husband who died off site) to be flown back to Reykjavik, bought shoes for a guest’s wife and arranged a graduation party at a nearby restaurant for a guest flying in from Mexico. His deputy, Antonio Bignone, has been asked to arrange a camel ride in Hyde Park (‘this is The Dorchester, so we found a circus’) and a helicopter flight from the hotel to Heathrow. The only thing they won’t do is anything illegal.
Two girls in the lobby seem to be crying, and Harry is as alert as a gun dog until he realises they are laughing at photos on a phone. He has to defuse any disruption. Once, a tabloid reporter tried to infiltrate Michael Jackson’s suite, dressed as a footman bearing an invitation from the Queen. Harry noticed he was wearing trainers and escorted him out.
