Berners Tavern
Photo Credit: Nikolas Koenig
The London EDITION, Ian Schrager’s Fitzrovia hotel at 10 Berners Street, has stayed relevant for more than a decade thanks to a lobby that actually gets used, Berners Tavern (chef-patron Jason Atherton, executive chef Andrei Poptelecan), and The Punch Room, one of London’s most atmospheric hotel cocktail bars. Built inside a Grade II-listed building dating to 1835, it sits within walking distance of Soho, Oxford Street and Covent Garden.
Photo Credit: Nikolas Koenig
For a hotel that’s been open since 2013, The London EDITION still has the remarkable ability to feel like somewhere you want to be right now.
That sounds simpler than it is. London isn’t exactly short on splashy new hotel openings, members’ clubs, scene-y restaurants or bars designed to become Instagram famous before their first cocktail is poured. Yet more than a decade after Ian Schrager opened The London EDITION in partnership with Marriott International, the Fitzrovia hotel hasn’t lost its particular pull. Haute Living first covered the property when it opened in 2015, and a decade on, it’s worth asking why it’s still working.
Walk through the doors, and you understand why.
The lobby is beautiful, certainly, soaring ceilings, original marble, glittering stucco, a sweeping staircase and those enormous polished silver sphere lights overhead, but beautiful hotel lobbies are hardly a rarity in London. What matters is that this one is alive. People are having drinks, taking meetings, waiting for dinner, flirting, working, watching one another. By evening, there’s that unmistakable sense that you don’t necessarily need to know where you’re going next, because you might already be there.
And that, more than any single design element, is what The London EDITION has managed to preserve.
Set inside a building that dates to 1835, the hotel was conceived as a collision of two very British institutions, the aristocratic country manor and the private gentleman’s club, filtered through Schrager’s much sexier, more contemporary lens. It shouldn’t necessarily feel current more than a decade later.
It does.
Photo Credit: Nikolas Koenig
A Hotel That Feels Like London, Without Resorting to Cliché
The building was formerly the Berners Hotel and retains its Georgian architectural elements alongside Grade II-listed Belle Époque interiors, marble and elaborately carved ceilings. But walk through the doors and any expectation of a hushed heritage hotel disappears almost immediately.
The London EDITION was conceived around two quintessentially British references: the aristocratic English country manor and the private gentleman’s club, injected with something decidedly more modern, urban and slightly mischievous.
That’s exactly how it feels.
The lobby is spectacular without being stiff: a soaring, almost theatrical room of original marble and glittering stucco ceilings, punctuated by contemporary pieces including Ingo Maurer’s polished silver sphere lights, Christian Liaigre furnishings and Salvador Dalí-inspired lamps.
It shouldn’t necessarily all work together. Somehow, it does.
More importantly, people actually use the room.
This isn’t one of those magnificent hotel lobbies everyone photographs and then promptly abandons. People meet here. They work here. They order drinks here. They linger. By late afternoon, the energy begins to change, and by evening, the hotel feels less like somewhere you’re staying and more like somewhere you’ve managed to get into.
That social electricity is part of Schrager’s DNA. His idea of the hotel as a kind of theater, and of the lobby as a genuine social space, stretches back decades, and The London EDITION takes the concept beyond nightlife alone. Its public spaces were designed to accommodate work as easily as play.
In an era in which every luxury hotel claims it wants to make travelers feel like locals, The London EDITION accomplishes something better: it makes you feel like you temporarily have a particularly fabulous London life.
Photo Credit: The London EDITION
Berners Tavern Is Still One of London’s Great Rooms
And then there is Berners Tavern.
Some restaurants are about the food. Some are about the room. The great ones make it impossible to separate the two.
Berners Tavern is unquestionably one of London’s great dining rooms, grand, glamorous and almost absurdly photogenic, with its soaring ceilings, elaborate plasterwork, chandeliers and walls crowded salon-style with artwork. The hotel’s original materials describe its interiors as Parisian-inspired and identify Jason Atherton as chef patron of the London property, with Andrei Poptelecan running the kitchen day to day as executive chef.
Breakfast here feels like an occasion even when you aren’t particularly trying to make it one.
And this was also where one of the things I notice most about luxury hotels became apparent: the staff remembered me.
Not just my name. My weirdly specific breakfast order.
There is a difference between technically excellent service and intuitive service. The former is increasingly expected at this level; the latter is what you remember after you’ve checked out. When someone remembers exactly how you take something without requiring you to explain yourself all over again the next morning, it seems tiny, almost insignificant, until you realize that’s precisely what luxury hospitality is supposed to do.
It removes friction.
Schrager has said that the definition of luxury has changed and that he’d rather EDITION be known for service than anything else. It’s easy to put that kind of statement in a press release. It’s considerably harder to make a guest actually feel it.
Here, I did.
Photo Credit: The London EDITION
The Punch Room Is Where You Go When You Don’t Want the Night to End
If Berners Tavern is the hotel’s grand gesture, The Punch Room is its seductive little secret.
The paneled cocktail bar was inspired by English country-house libraries and 19th-century London clubs, with custom furnishings and drinks traditionally presented on silver salvers. It is intimate, dark and unapologetically grown-up, exactly the sort of room that makes you want to cancel whatever you were supposed to do next.
And that’s part of the appeal of staying here: there isn’t much incentive to leave.
You can start with a drink, move into dinner at Berners Tavern, retreat back into the lobby or Punch Room afterward and suddenly realize several hours have disappeared without ever really leaving the building.
In London, where a seemingly simple night out can involve a cab across town, another across town in the opposite direction and eventually wondering why you’ve spent £60 getting from one cocktail to another, having this much under one roof feels especially decadent.
Photo Credit: The London EDITION
Upstairs, Everything Gets Quieter
The cleverest thing The London EDITION does, however, may be the transition between its public and private worlds.
Downstairs is spectacle. Upstairs is retreat.
Guest rooms move away from the grandeur of the lobby toward something much calmer, using dark walnut or pale oak paneling, soft lighting, tactile textiles and contemporary details. Among the artwork are Hendrik Kerstens’ photographic reinterpretations of Dutch Masters, another small expression of the old-meets-new tension running through the entire property.
It is restraint rather than maximalism, and after spending a day ricocheting around London, that’s exactly what you want.
Because the luxury here isn’t about stuffing every possible decorative flourish into a guest room. It’s about making the room somewhere you actually want to come back to.
Photo Credit: The London EDITION
Location, Location, Fitzrovia
Then there’s the geography.
The London EDITION sits in Fitzrovia, within walking distance of Soho, Covent Garden, Oxford Street and London’s theatre district. That puts you close enough to some of London’s busiest neighborhoods to reach them easily, while allowing the hotel itself to feel slightly removed from their chaos.
For me, this is one of its greatest strengths.
London is enormous, and where you stay dramatically changes the city you experience. Stay too far west and you can find yourself constantly crossing town. Stay in the wrong part of Mayfair and suddenly every outing involves navigating crowds. Fitzrovia gives you access without completely swallowing you whole.
You can walk to Soho for dinner, Oxford Street for shopping, Covent Garden or the West End, and still return to a hotel that feels like its own self-contained world.
And that’s ultimately why The London EDITION works.
The London EDITION is located at 10 Berners St, London W1T 3NP, United Kingdom
For more of Haute Living‘s London coverage, check out our comprehensive guide here: The Haute Guide to the Best of Luxury London by Neighborhood
Frequently Asked Questions
What is The Punch Room?
The London EDITION’s intimate, reservations-recommended cocktail bar, inspired by English country-house libraries and 19th-century London clubs, with drinks served on silver salvers.
Is The London EDITION still relevant more than a decade after opening?
Yes. The hotel’s lobby, Berners Tavern and The Punch Room remain active social destinations for both guests and London locals, not just hotel amenities.
What neighborhood is best for a London hotel stay?
Fitzrovia offers walkable access to Soho, Oxford Street, Covent Garden and the West End without sitting in the middle of their busiest, most crowded stretches.