The ArtSpace Café at Claridge’s serves Instagram-perfect baked goods, cups of champagne and free coffee for art students. Olivia Palamountain reports
Mayfair hotel Claridge’s is charging into coffee culture with the launch of the ArtSpace Café, an all-day dining and takeaway spot for light(ish) bites and patisserie with its own entrance on Brook’s Mews.
Designed by British architectural designer John Pawson, the café features a glass patisserie case laden with artful French fancies (think caramel Saint Honoré and pistachio Paris-Brest), a marble communal table for remote working and easy access to Claridge’s ArtSpace gallery, which is free to visit.
Breakfast favourites are pastries, coconut chia pudding, homemade granola and hot dishes such as baked eggs with ratatouille, while the lunch menu is crammed with more savoury fare – think roasted brie and wild mushrooms on toast, croissant sandwiches and a croque madame on homemade sourdough.
Flavours include classic lemon and sugar and an homage to Claridge’s Seafood Cocktail, featuring native lobster, white crab meat, lettuce and quail’s egg, laced with Marie-Rose sauce and topped with lashings of caviar.
Both the Café and the gallery space continue Claridge’s longtime commitment to the arts and relationship with the Mayfair art community.
Nowhere is this better expressed than in the hotel’s pledge to support of the next generation of artists; the first 50 art students who show their ID every Monday will receive a complimentary coffee.
That said, everyone can get creative here, with diners encouraged to make use of the art pads and ceramic pots full of pens and pencils and paper pads that dotted round the space. You can even have a doodle on the café’s coffee cups – Starbuck’s eat your heart out.
Over in Knightsbridge, Claridge’s sister hotel the Berkley also has a destination patisserie by Cédric Grolet who is renowned for turning pastry, cream and sugar into stunning works of art in themselves.