5 Hertford Street
IT PLEASES ME GREATLY that 5 Hertford Street is located in Shepherd Market. This tiny but tangled enclave in the heart of Mayfair is at once louche and elegant, profoundly metropolitan and curiously villagey. It was no coincidence that Michael Arlen used it as the setting for his best-selling novel of 1924, The Green Hat. The great-granddaughter of his heroine, the ineffably glamorous Iris Storm, would surely belong to a club that, since its formation by Robin Birley in 2012, has established itself as the chicest nightspot in London.
Discretion is the watchword at 5 Hertford Street. To allude to its cachet – indeed, to its very existence – in any but the most oblique terms would be infra dig. Suffice to say that it’s frequented by members who can and do take the best food, the finest wines and the most impeccable service for granted. Flamboyant but never vulgar, the Rifat Ozbek-designed décor is a triumph of maximalism that takes the reassuring tropes of the English country house and blends them with the more exotic influences of Venice, Turkey and Morocco. The result isn’t just opulent in the extreme, it’s also quite sinfully comfortable. From the basement dance floor in Loulou’s to the attic bar and roof terrace, the warren-like arrangement of stairs, landings and seating areas further enhances the mood of conspiratorial, behind-closed-doors intimacy. Members only.
See also: Bellamy’s, Claridge’s, Oswald’s, Wiltons
