Inside The Goring

Luxury and Personal Touch in London

It begins, as all proper London stories should, with a door.

Not a metaphorical one. A literal, heavy, well-mannered, Belgravia door, the sort that doesn’t swing open so much as welcome your personally. We’d arrived at The Goring at the end of a four-hour drive; A short break, theatre for pleasure, a West End audition for my daughter, and above all a few days together. A small family adventure with disproportionate emotional gravity.

The Goring has plenty of headlines, the kind that travel writers (and PR teams) can’t resist. London’s only family-owned five-star hotel, opened in 1910 by Otto Goring and still run by the same family more than a century on. It’s a royal neighbour, a short, polite wave from Buckingham Palace. And yes, the Princess of Wales stayed here the night before her wedding; even the Royal Family’s own site records it with the neatness of a timetable.

But the thing about The Goring is that the headlines are just the gilt edge. The real point is what happens when you step inside and discover it is less “hotel” and more home; a home with better carpets, a Michelin-star kitchen, and an unsettling ability to make you feel immediately known.

Peter, the head doorman, who has recently marked sixty years at the property, stood atop the steps as if he’d been expecting us. Because he was, despite this being our first visit.

Peter has stood at that door since 1965. Before that he was a Fleet Street messenger boy, then crossed oceans in the Merchant Navy transporting “Ten Pound Poms” toward new lives in Australia, before returning to London and, by a twist of family circumstance, inheriting his younger brother’s position at The Goring. He has remained ever since. London changed around him. The Goring did not.

There was something pleasingly circular in a Fleet Street messenger boy now standing watch over a hotel that still understands the old language of London: discretion, ritual, continuity.

Peter has worked for three generations of the Goring family. Thousands upon thousands of arrivals. Rock stars, royalty, actors, unknowns, and people like us.

“Talking to people,” he told me with a small shrug, “that’s the best part of my job”.

How very ‘Goring’.

And so begins the quiet choreography from the most personal of London hotels: bags taken from my car before I’d even noticed, smiles and greetings of welcome from all positioned in the lobby, the hum of Belgravia safely shut outside like a closing umbrella.

We’d chosen Belgravia on purpose, slightly outside our usual West End epicentre, but close enough to reach the theatres in ten minutes by taxi and still wander on foot to Knightsbridge, Chelsea, Mayfair, Hyde Park and of course, Belgravia itself.

It’s a different London here: less neon, more lamplight; fewer backpacks, more discreet handbags; the sort of streets where the loudest thing is often the florist’s door bell.

Check-in happened at the same speed our bags vanished. Then, like the first line of a good novel, the real story arrived: The Goring Bar, and, because the universe has a sense of comedic timing, a Goring Negroni was already waiting, my reputation clearly preceding me.

The bar itself is a study in English understatement, polished to a shine: soft light, old-world glamour, bottles arranged like a private library. It feels like the kind of place where an excellent life decision and a terrible one might both begin with the same sentence: “What can I get you?”

The Negroni erased the road from my shoulders and tasted exactly as a Negroni should taste in London; serious, composed, and faintly conspiratorial.

My daughter’s shoulders, meanwhile, stayed stubbornly tense. Auditions do that: they sit behind the eyes, humming away like a fluorescent light.

And then came the upgrade, to a Belgravia Suite, delivered not as a grand announcement but as a quiet, thoughtful, almost casual kindness.

The extra space mattered. My daughter had privacy, as I attempted plausible deniability regarding her snoring allegations.

If you want to understand The Goring’s particular genius, look at how its rooms marry comfort and ceremony. The suite was silk-lined and opulent without being fussy, and the technology modern enough that you didn’t feel you were staying in a museum that occasionally brought you tea. Champagne and chocolates waited, along with West End-themed treats for my daughter, a small gesture, perfectly judged.

The bathroom was Belgravia marble done properly: heated floors, a separate bath and large powerful shower, plush robes and ‘Jo Loves’ toiletries, an on-brand nod to the Belgravia neighbourhood.

And the bed? The kind of bed that persuades you the outside will wait such was its comfort, along with pillow menu that actually earns the name.

But The Goring’s magic isn’t just in its materials. It’s in the fact that, while it can do grande dame elegance, it also has a sly, fun streak, the sort of humour you only find in places confident enough not to take themselves too seriously. The Goring has resisted the modern temptation to reinvent itself for relevance. It understands that relevance, when earned honestly, does not expire.

It further revealed itself as we explored, helped along by the ever-passionate Charlotte, who gave me a personal tour with the kind of knowledgeable enthusiasm that makes you feel you’re being let in on secrets rather than sold features.

There were monkeys hidden in hand-painted wallcoverings, a family portrait that recasts the generations as The Beatles and paintings that, at first glance, look appropriately solemn, until you step closer and realise someone has quietly seated Queen Victoria beside Edmund Blackadder and Snoop Dogg dressed as a shepherd, what else?

It’s brilliant, a gesture of gentle irreverence that prevents The Goring from ever becoming museum-like. It remains alive.

Outside, Belgravia does what it does best, performs “London” at its most composed. There’s beauty in the restraint, white stucco façades, iron railings, the calm confidence of money that doesn’t need to shout. Two streets over, you get the candy-pink theatre of Peggy Porschen, cupcakes held up like offerings. It’s a useful contrast: London, in one frame, can be both powdered and perfectly pressed.

Dinner on our first night was in The Dining Room, The Goring’s Michelin-starred restaurant. And here, again, the hotel does that thing it does so well: it has the credentials, but it doesn’t make you feel you need to earn the right to be there.

Yes, it proudly boasts it’s recently retained Michelin-star, and the room wears its reputation with easy confidence, but the atmosphere is relaxed, quintessentially British in the best sense: polished but not stiff, elegant but not hushed into self-importance.

The food delivered: contemporary seasonal British cooking, beautifully done, with an excellent wine list that made resistance feel like a poor character trait. The 2014 Puligny-Montrachet was too good to resist, because I am the sort of man who can justify a white Burgundy as “hydration” after a long drive.

But the true story was service, the kind you remember long after you’ve forgotten the exact garnish. Laura and Conley (“Con’) served us, and they were exceptional: knowledgeable, conversational, genuinely warm, and, crucially, attentive in a way that felt human rather than procedural.

They remembered my daughter’s audition the following day. They asked about her and our plans aside from that. They spoke to my daughter like an adult with something important on her mind, which, in that moment, she had.

The kitchen also adapted a dish to suit her preferences without fuss or that slightly patronising “we’ll see what we can do” tone you sometimes get in grand rooms. The result was a plate left spotless, the highest compliment a teenager can give.

Breakfast the next morning was equally impressive, beautifully done, friendly, unforced (and delicious), the sort of start that makes you feel London is going to behave today. My daughter, who had gone to bed the night before with the quiet dread that only auditions can bring, found herself disarmed by kindness: Laura arranged for special buttermilk pancakes from the kitchen, and somewhere between the first forkful and the last sip of her Hot Chocolate, the nerves that had travelled with us from home simply dissolved.

By the time we left for the theatre, she seemed lighter. Not because anything external had changed, but because she had been seen, and made to feel that she belonged. London, suddenly, seemed less intimidating.

And we returned each time to the same sensation: the hotel didn’t just recognise us, it registered us. From Peter at the door to Michael, the Managing Director, housekeeping to the bar team (who produced more than one superb Negroni with the calm of a man defusing a bomb), people spoke, engaged, remembered.

This is the thing people get wrong about great hotels. They think greatness is about luxury objects; chandeliers, marble, rare wine couple with pomp, prestige and social rankings. But true greatness is about attention, and attention is an act of generosity, and The Goring has been doing this since 1910, and it shows, not because it feels old, but because it feels trained, and natural, part of the fabric.

It’s an old line, but it’s true: Luxury without pretension is rare.

The Goring delivers it, with heritage, with humour, with an immaculate sense of timing, and with service so personal it feels almost like friendship. Some places impress you. A very few places understand you.

On our final morning, departure arrived reluctantly. Peter stood at the door, exactly where he has stood since King Charles III was the same age as Ava is today; he gave the sort of farewell that suggested he expected, and quietly intended, to see us again.

The door closed softly behind us, as it has done for more than a century.