It may seem like a dream come true, but being offered a weekend’s test drive in a brand spanking new Bentley GTC Speed comes with its own very unique set of challenges. Such as finding the ignition switch for starters.

Track days are one thing as they typically offer a trusty co-pilot of steely disposition to coach you through the basics, such as finding the gear shift (in an age of ‘paddles’ this can be trickier than you think), adjusting the seat to ensure emergency braking is a physical possibility and, perhaps trickiest of all in a 400bhp Ferrari 360, turning on the headlights after dark.

Remove the co-pilot, send the car directly to a hotel without so much as a Beginners Guide To on the back seat and suddenly an already apprehensive driver can crumble into a vision of incompetence.

And so it was that i found myself outside The Berkeley hotel in London one Friday evening, fumbling around with a disarmingly complex Bentley dashboard while an amused crowd of nicotine hungry hotel guests watched on from the sidelines. 

“Everything alright sir?”, said the smartly dressed doorman in a think Lancashire accent.

“She’s a real beauty, i’ve had a few of these pull through here lately, although this is the newer version by the looks of things…”

Having so generously opened the door to further enquiry, I was only too happy to let him give me a whistlestop tour of the car’s ignition (both button and key versions, confusingly), SatNAV system and all six seat adjuster switches.

Despite the obvious incongruity of the situation, his reassuring tone and inspired lack of condescension served not only to help set my nerves at ease, but left me with a newfound admiration for these unflappable hotel personalities who have, no doubt, seen it all in their time. 

Tim and Kit Kemp’s Firmdale Hotels are an anomaly amongst London’s luxury hotels.
In an environment polarised between the resolutely contemporary (Hempel, Sanderson, Metropolitan et al) and the less single-mindedly traditional (Dorchester, Claridges etc.), the Firmdale collection, which includes The Soho, The Charlotte Street, The Haymarket and The Covent Garden Hotels, has found a singular voice.

At once boutique and British, yet also cosy and modern, we believe these hotels epitomise the best of homespun London hospitality. No wonder they are favourites with well-heeled Americans seeking something more sophisticated than the usual pastiche of English country cottage or less formal than a grande dame with cosmetic surgery.

Firmdale’s service philosophy is cheerful and informal – and largely delivered, as elsewhere in London, by a transient tribe of Eastern Europeans. However, this is a brand of hospitality that manages to marry genuine friendliness with just enough five star professionalism to offer a  more homely alternative to the service-by-numbers approach that now typifies the majors.

Firmdale understands the little touches that make a stay in one of their hotels cosy enough to feel like a real home from home, whilst maintaining standards appropriate to their price point.

In particular, I love their honesty bar concept. It’s a signature differentiator which not only dramatises the Firmdale brand perfectly but provides the operator with efficiencies of its own. So, it’s a notable win-win for guest and hotelier alike.

Firmdale understands that the luxury guest likes choice and options. Imagine returning to the Covent Garden Hotel after a day working in Soho or shopping around the West End. On the one hand you might enjoy soaking up the buzz of the after-work crowd at the zinc bar of the Brasserie Max, which spills out Paris-style onto the Monmouth Street sidewalk at the merest hint of a sunny day.

Alternatively, you may prefer to retire from the public eye to the upstairs drawing room and library. Here, in common with all Firmdale hotels, you will discover a small annexe containing a fully-stocked service bar where you can help oneself to a gin and tonic, mixed as only you know how, or in my case, discover a bottle of my favourite rosé from Mike Dobrovic’s Mulderbosch vineyards.

You take and open the bottle yourself, sign your name on the sheet and pour yourself a glass as full as you like. No waiting for a waiter. No pretentious service. No check to sign when you’re done. Nobody to interrupt the conversation with your companion. It’s feels like pre-prandial drinks at your host country pile. It’s not how you want it every time but Firmdale’s insight is that you will want it some of the time. And you do. And it works.

Cleverly of course, it also works for them too. Fewer waiting staff on shift more than makes up for the odd drink that even the wealthy will occasionally forget to note. But that’s easily factored into the pricing and what Firmdale delivers is yet another simple but effective touchpoint that illustrates their signature style vividly.

A few years ago, I had the privilege of meeting Julian Metcalfe, the founder of Pret a Manger, the UK high-street sandwich chain. Simply put, ‘Pret’ creates handmade natural food avoiding the obscure chemical, additives and preservatives common to so much of the ‘prepared’ and fast’ food on the market today.

Julian waxed lyrical about the freshness of his food, how it’s all made in store not at a central depot, how anything that’s left at the end of the day is given to the homeless instead of being thrown away and how the staff he trains are genuinely empowered to deliver a great customer experience. I found Julian to be sincere and likeable but I’ve grown somewhat used to the hollow promises of corporate leaders and to be honest took much of what he said with a generous pinch of salt.

It was at about the same time that a magistrate removed my driving licence in consideration of a rare speed that I had clocked up late one night on the Marylebone Road. This resulted in my having to take the tube to work in Holborn from my home in Hammersmith while my beloved chariot gathered dust outside the house all week. Not only did this major adjustment in my daily routine afford me the opportunity to read a paper in the morning and jostle for an inch of railing at night, but the walk from Holborn to my Bloomsbury office took my right past one of Pret’s many mid-town outlets.

It became my daily bread therefore to stop in at the High Holborn branch of Pret for a cappucino – incidentally only Costa Coffee serves a better one out of the chains – and one or another of the many sticky delights on offer. Over time, I got to know the morning crew and in particular the manager responsible for opening up the shop. One morning shortly after I’d begun my new routine, the shop was open, the coffee machine up to pressure, the cinnamon twist piping hot but the till was empty because the cash hadn’t yet arrived. I tendered a tenner but there wasn’t change. ‘On the house’, laughed the manager and seeing as you are pretty much our first customer every morning, so it will be every time you pay before our cash has arrived.

Needless to say I subsequently woke 10 mins earlier each day and tried to catch an earlier tube. Thanks to the vagueries of the London Underground my nefarious attempt to secure free coffee and Danish for the rest of my driving ban was only sporadically successful but when it was, my friend Juan duly obliged. The gift was a small thing but much appreciated but what truly impressed me was seeing the local empowerment of his store teams illustrated in practice so shortly after I’d heard the mantra from the boss’s mouth. Pret, despite its francophone name, is truly a great British Brand.

A recent short stay at &Beyond’s Sossusvlei Mountain Lodge in the NamibRand Nature Reserve in Namibia was frankly disappointing. Whilst the setting was undeniably magnificent, the Lodge itself was tired in its hardware and lacking any real service ethos that we could determine, a vacuum that seemed to stem from the seemingly miscast young South African couple running the place. All-in-all, it was a quite spectacular failure in terms of an &Beyond experience…

However, on our last evening, something rather remarkable happened. It was the management couple’s night off and we got talking to the resident astronomer at the bar before dinner. She is a music teacher from a primary school in the UK but spends parts of her vacation time each year working as a stellar guide (in both senses of the expression) at Sossusvlei and other lodges in Namibia.

Earlier in the evening we were convinced that we’d briefly heard a chorus of live voices, apparently floating on the wafts of home cooking emanating from the kitchens. Our astronomer friend explained that the lodge had a choir, in which most of the 30-40 strong staff chose to participate, there not being many other recreational facilities on offer. We were then told, that they were not officially supposed to perform for guests although the choir had actually been prize winners in local and regional competitions.

Just as our table was finishing supper however, the doors from the kitchen opened with a flourish and no fewer than 20 choristers processed out in full song, regaled in splendid traditional costumes, all made by the ladies of the choir as their battle dress for the competitions.

Not only the four of us, but each and every table sat and listened in awe, spellbound by the raw power of the harmony created by those same people who had served our food and cleaning our rooms earlier in the day.

We’ve all heard of singing for our supper but this was a treat that went beyond any quantity of free grappa. And how telling that it was the spontaneous collective gesture of an entire staff shift that redeemed one of the most disappointing hospitality experiences that any of us could remember. For us, this is yet another reminder that in the worlds of service and hospitality, management don’t always know best. 

Gone are the days in Siem Reap when you’ll have the place to yourself and you can meander from temple-to-temple on your own. Dodging coachloads of North Asian tourists with high volume jabber and even higher volume shutter clicks becomes an objective all of its own.

Last year I wished to dine at The Wolseley with a colleague. We’d waited in the bar on-spec and so were grateful to be seated at all by the affable and unflappable restaurant manager.

One of the great things about this business, quite aside from the wonderful room and classic brasserie menu, is the way they manage the tables. From 7am until midnight pretty much 7 days per week, the place pumps. Reservations are hard to come by and no-shows are quickly filled with an eager waiting list of walk-ins.

My companion and I settled in looking forward to our comfort food and anticipating even greater comfort from a bottle of Brunello - an indulgence at nearly £80 a bottle but a treat we both would appreciate.

With the starters cleared, the same manager who’d procured us our seats in the first place approached discreetly and asked us if we’d mind moving to the next table. A party of four had just arrived on-spec and he would be able to seat them, just as he had done us, if we could shift along one whereupon he could join our table to the one next to that.

Being in-between courses and grateful to be accommodated in the first place, we moved without hesitation, the whole manoeuvre taking merely seconds. We both commented on how well the request had been handled but also on how well this restaurant manager was managing his inventory.

Just after the Choucroute and Fillet arrived, the wine waiter appeared with a fresh bottle of Brunello, which was already opened and from which he topped up our flagging glasses. “With our apologies for the inconvenience,” he explained. We were most grateful for a complimentary glass each but were astonished to be told that the whole bottle was on the house.

What a classy thing to do, opening a second bottle of what we had already been drinking, despite the price. Most establishments would content themselves with a free liqueur but they had judged correctly that wine was our interest and had therefore offered something gratis with real perceived and actual value. All this despite the fact that it really had been no trouble to move and that we were lucky to have a table in the first place. Combined with the fact that it was a quick calculation that the value of the table of four was greater than the lost margin on the wine, we considered this one of the finest pieces of restaurant management either of us had ever experienced.

The Ivy London is one of the world’s most sought-after and star-studded tables and this on the basis of food that is both simple and reasonable in price.

For me, one small thing the Ivy does epitomises how Chris Corbyn and Jeremy King (the restaurant owners) manage to ensure an exceptional customer experience, time after time.

It’s a law of eating out that when two of you have agreed to meet at a certain time, one or the other will be late. I, for one, am always on time and all too often find myself sitting at a table alone.

Being offered a drink, which is the standard response of restaurants in these circumstances, does little to alleviate the syndrome but in fact only makes things worse as you now look like a solitary drinker too! 

What the Ivy Group does (and they do the same thing at The Wolseley now too) is subtle and yet wonderfully effective. One of the floor managers offers the waiting or single diner a copy of the London Evening Standard.

This is so simple and yet so brilliant for a number of reasons. It gives the waiting party something to occupy themselves with, rather than fiddling with a cigarette, pretending to text all the many friends that you DO have or wolfing down G&Ts a little too quickly for your own good.

As long as you’re gainfully occupied keeping abreast of the day’s news, nobody seems to look at you oddly. Also, the choice of paper fits the brand of these London restaurants so well. It’s not just a newspaper. It’s the Standard and usually handed to you by a waiter with a broad East End accent. The Ivy is in and of London and so the small format paper, which is also easy to handle, is the ideal choice.

When your guest does finally arrive, she (for yes, it is usually her who arrives second) feels less guilty that she kept you waiting and, what’s more, you are now able to dazzle her with the latest fashion story, stock tip or even restaurant review.

People who dine at the Ivy talk as much about being looked after as about the food itself. This is but one of many details that set the place apart.

From the idyllic, remote location, the working rice paddies behind, local children flying colourful kites in the summer sky, to the sounds of the rolling ocean in the near-distance, Tamu Seseh was an ideal refuge from the sanitised urban sprawl of Singapore, our home a few years ago. 

The villa complex, designed by renowned architect Guy Morgan and built in keeping with traditional Balinese architecture has been available for holiday lets for the last few years.

With a staff of 6 including the mangy but strangely charming guard dog Lucky, this was our first experience of a non-hotel based summer holiday. In reality our expectation of any genuine service was limited due to the villa product and its remote location.

How wrong could we have been? The service was intimate and attentive yet at no point invasive. Breakfasts of fresh fruit, cereals and eggs-any-way started our days exquisitely along with genuinely aromatic, flavoursome and fresh coffee served in Bodum’s best. A resident chef was on-hand for nights when we preferred to enjoy the sunsets and the scenic silence from home as opposed to the bright lights of Seminyak and the attractions of Ku De Ta. The in-house food was fabulously prepared, tantilising and authentic fare - particularly the Beef Rendang that remains to this day the best I have ever tasted!

No single element made this vacation so special, it was the experience as a whole that made it one of our best. For four-star money we felt like rock-stars in retreat… It was 2 weeks of heaven in its most idyllic sense where we returned to the world refreshed, relaxed and altogether happier that we’d discovered this little Balinese gem!

A little under four years ago, on April 6 our son Mungo Oliver arrived in this world. Despite our being resident in South Africa, my wife’s father, being an English gentlemen and something of a traditionalist at that, ensured that news of his seventh grandchild was posted with the correct establishment organs – The Times and the Daily Telegraph.

Approximately one week later, a letter arrived from Messrs C Hoare & Co who have been our bankers for the last few years. The delightfully composed note from my personal account manager, congratulated the two of us on the birth of our son in warm and genuine terms and proceeded to offer Master Oliver Jackson his own facilities with the bank, with the sole caveat that they were unable to offer the young man either signing rights or a VISA card until he reaches the age of consent.

Needless to say, Mungo now has his own deposit account into which grandparents and sundry other familial benefactors are gently encouraged to contribute on birthdays, high days and holidays.

At once a brilliant example of customer relationship management (i.e. starting to build a potentially valuable relationship right from the get-go) and a lovely example of the kind of cute observation and attention to detail that sets true private banking apart from that which most often masquerades under the epithet, perhaps such attention is only possible today from an institution that bears a family name and is still owned and managed by them too.

Not many would equate the Cape Town suburb of Rondebosch with a first rate dining experience, but after my visit to Cargills, a small restaurant tucked away near the suburb’s railway station, I’d beg to differ.

The menu is small: 5 starters, 5 mains and 5 deserts, but has more than enough variety, it’s about quality over quantity.

To start, we were treated to a delicious duck liver pate along with freshly baked buns to whet the appetite… Starters were a full-flavoured prawn bisque along with pan fried baby calamari with orange chilli butter, leeks and peppers for my wife, delicious… For mains I had the perfectly cooked beef fillet in the unusual but complementary  wine and bone marrow sauce. Dessert was a shared Vanilla Infused Crème Brûlée which uses real vanilla pods to give it a unique flavour.

The food was delicious but it was the atmosphere filled with quiet conversation from neighbouring tables and the efficient, unobtrusive service provided by our waiter along with the appearance of our chef, Joska Nagy, from time to time ensuring that all was well and to top up any wineglasses vaguely in need of a refill, that truly completed the experience. 

After typing this, I think I’ve finally figured out why not that many people know of Cargills..It’s because it only has 8 tables and current patrons deem it necessary to keep it low profile to ensure that they will still be able to get a seat on their night of choice! Unassuming, unpretentious but ultimately one of the best all-round dining experiences I have had to date in Cape Town.. Here’s to Cargills!!