Sofitel Adelaide opens to reveal luxury touches and French connections
Adelaide’s newest luxury lodgings have opened. What’s the verdict from Travel + Luxury’s hotel expert?
Opposite the raffish Cold Chisel Lane in Adelaide’s West End, where a UNESCO City of Music plaque commemorates the founding of this greatly loved band in the South Australian capital, there’s a rather sharp stylistic change of pace. A light-box installation adorns the ceiling of a low porte-cochere with images of irises and tulips and rich blue fabric hovering above the vehicular entrance to the newly opened $150m Sofitel Adelaide.
The images are taken from a whimsical photographic artwork hanging in the hotel’s lobby, Field of Dreams by Newcastle-based fine art photographer Alexia Sinclair. Drawing inspiration from the 18th-century French court, the photo depicts a young woman, possibly Marie Antoinette, wearing an elaborate hat in the shape of a galleon (as you do) while lying on a bed of irises and tulips, specially grown to stage the luxuriant photo. It’s safe to say I’m hooked, even before stepping foot in the hotel. Flowers and France; what’s not to love?
Part of the French-headquartered Accor behemoth, every Sofitel around the globe works to a design brief that celebrates its host city while tapping into the group’s Gallic heritage.
In Adelaide, in one of Australia’s most hotly anticipated hotel openings of the year, this French panache is applied lightly. With an impressionist’s brush rather than a plasterer’s trowel.
Bespoke carpets, intricate parquet floors and sheets of gleaming marble provide for an elegant, residential mood where the ground floor lobby features a cosy Champagne bar and a meandering red chandelier that flows above the room like a river of wine, referencing Adelaide’s cultural links with Bordeaux.
Elsewhere, the hotel’s French-ness and iconic Adelaide emblems (wine, the arts and that old “city of churches” chestnut) are celebrated with considerable joie de vivre. Behind chateau-style doors in Club Millesime (servicing the premium guestrooms and suites), a stylish wine room is decorated with bespoke wallpaper depicting dapper chaps and gals in period dress enjoying the local drop (but with the city’s church windows in the background). The glamorous indoor pool is more Versailles, with great blue chandeliers twinkling above the water. But it is in the level nine Garcon Bleu that I really begin to feel homesick for France. The 90-seat brasserie-style restaurant is straight out of Paris with its interlocking parquet and tiled floors, gleaming brass railings, mirrored pillars, large-format art in the style of Matisse and Picasso and elegant pale blue velvet seating.
We are tucked by a window offering rooftop views (how Parisian); on the other side of the sprawling room the huge open kitchen is firing on all cylinders, with waiters crowding a serving counter reminiscent of one of those fancy French La Cornue or Lacanche stoves. Executive head chef Justin Dingle-Garciyya (who trained under the legendary Raymond Blanc), working with Gianni Delogu (late of Melbourne’s Vue de Monde) has designed a menu of classic bistro dishes with an Aussie twist.
Out comes a creamy chicken liver parfait, then a perfect beef tartare topped with a tiny egg yolk, later an Adelaide Hills riff on duck a l’orange. Utterly delicious, house-cured salmon fume is served under a glass dome of smoke, revealed with a flourish by the eager young waiting staff, decked top to toe in smart uniforms by celebrated Adelaide couturier Paolo Sebastian.
Hotel general manager Rachael Harman, relocated from Singapore, works the room; the SA border has just opened, and the restaurant is filled with interstaters providing a rather joyous return to normality.
Sofitel’s 251 guestrooms and suites have been designed by Adelaide-born, Bangkok-based Carl Almeida of P49 Deesign, working closely with the hotel’s local proprietors, the family-owned Palumbo Group. Company managing director Daniel Palumbo selected the marble in Italy, machines were set up to cut the parquet flooring and local photographer Drew Lenman commissioned to capture sophisticated black and white images of city architectural details (my favourite is the bee-topped cupola of the neogothic Beehive Corner, home to the Haigh’s Chocolates flagship store). Another of Lenman’s images, of a cathedral window, was used as a template to create a lovely, tiled mosaic in each of the bathroom showers.
Lined top to toe with marble, the bathrooms are particularly swish and, in Prestige Suite 2410, large enough to host a petite soiree. The unusual triangular-shaped tub allows for comfy lounging minus slippage while reading and drinking tea or wine, and its compact size uses less water and fills faster. Luxury Balmain Paris amenities come in full-size bottles (no wasteful miniatures). My tub is set at the floor to ceiling window providing views all the way to the ocean, far enough to discern distant weather systems while quaffing a glass of the Adelaide Hills’ finest.
The suite is arranged as an enfilade, in soothing shades of grey, with handsome panelled walls, dressing room, giant TVs and plush Sofitel King bed. There are loads of lovely details, Parisian-style bedside lamps set on gleaming black side tables and the softest of soft bathrobes. The credenza concealing the minibar is leather lined, with little compartments for glasses, cups and snacks, like a modern-day cabinet of curiosities.
This attention to detail is evident throughout the hotel. The lifts are also leather lined; even the gym has the same leather finishes as those found in a Ferrari.
The hotel debuted early last November and is still putting the finishing touches to its soft opening phase. During my stay Club Millesime is open for evening drinks but not breakfast. No matter, the buffet in Garcon Bleu is lovely and before leaving I drop by the ground floor Champagne bar Deja Vu for a coffee. This name has special resonance for Adelaide locals. Once upon a retro time, the Sofitel site was home to the city’s original hit radio station 5KA. No doubt they played Cold Chisel on a loop, never imagining for a moment that one day folk would be dropping by 108 Currie St for a twice-baked souffle and glass of Krug.
In the know
Sofitel Adelaide is in the Adelaide CBD, about 15 minutes by car from the airport; from $320 a night. Opening package priced from $390 a night, twin-share, including breakfast, late check-out, and $50 credit to spend in Deja Vu.
Christine McCabe was a guest of Sofitel Adelaide.