Page 104 - Travel Leisure - USA (February 2020)

(one with a soaking tub), an outdoor the natural beauty of the setting. Rock
(St. Bart’s, continued from page 91)
of a spacious lounge area called Rémy
Bar. Tinged in green and gold, with a
touch of 1970s glam, it has an open
fourth wall overlooking the Sand Bar.
The menus are overseen, as before,
by chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten
(several dishes have migrated south
from his ABCV in New York City).
Its L-shaped tiers of seating take
advantage of the beach views and
create something of a stage set for
people-watching. Along with the
adjacent boutique, the bar and
restaurant combine to form a buzzing
all-day social hub, and the hotel’s
de facto living room.
The London-based interior
designer Martin Brudnizki did a superb
job with these public areas. Brudnizki,
who is known for his work at New
York’s Beekman Hotel, Miami’s Soho
Beach House, and Annabel’s, an
exclusive members’ club in London,
struck a careful balance between
colonial-tinged elegance and
beachside informality. The natural
materials include bamboo, rattan,
linen, and limestone, and the colors—
most prominently Eden Rock’s
signature red—are tropical and vibrant.
There is no lobby or reception desk;
check-in formalities are completed
after settling in. The overall effect is
lively, tasteful, and intimate—much
closer to a vacation home than a
corporate-driven luxury resort.
My duplex villa, called Orchid,
had ample space for spreading out
and relaxing—a large front porch, a
downstairs sitting room with a queen-
size daybed, two enormous bathrooms
102 T R AV E L + L E I S U R E | F E B R U A R Y
bath, and a wraparound terrace with
beach views. The master bedroom had
high, sloped ceilings and a bed frame
made of curved wooden panels. The
floors were a luxurious, cream-colored
marble, the closets copious and
enormous, the lighting superb.
Strewn throughout were details
that felt considered and un-hotel-like:
dried flowers arranged artfully in
ceramic vases, a leather tray to empty
my pockets into, big yellow coffee
mugs by the Nespresso machine. In
the bathroom I found a leather-bound
manicure kit and a red rubber ducky.
Other touches of cheeky humor
included an electric bug swatter
labeled paradise protector and a
sticker on the phone that read
use sparingly. It was, in short, a space
with personality. “We spent enormous
sums on books, placing different
volumes in each room,” David
Matthews told me. “And not just
standard-issue art books, but those
classic novels you’ve always meant to
reread.” (In mine: Treasure Island and
Ann Beattie’s collected New Yorker
stories.) Artworks were selected as
expressions of creativity rather than
items of décor. A mandala-like
painting of fruits and vegetables by
Chilean artist Alonsa Guevara hung
above my bed; monochromatic
acrylics by Spencer Matthews (no
relation) brightened the sitting room.
That night, I had dinner at the Sand
Bar with the hotel’s general manager,
Fabrice Moizan, who resembles
Richard Gere, only suaver, and French.
Surveying the room to confirm his
high standards were being met, he
explained the secret sauce behind the
hotel’s enviable 50 percent return
rate. “We identified a few words
that capture what the hotel is all
about: Eden, Rock, chic, and glamour.
Everything that we do—every service
element, dish in the restaurant, item
for sale in the store—must be
associated with one or more of these
words.” Eden focuses on the sea and
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encourages unconventional thinking.
Chic is all about the stylishness of the
design, while glamour ensures a steady
stream of A-list celebrities.
Over black-truffle pizza, mahi-mahi
bathed in coconut milk and lime juice,
and fresh spinach bucatini, Moizan
went on to outline his vision of Eden
Rock as a brand that lives outside the
walls of the hotel itself. The boutique,
Eden Being, carries exclusive
collaborations that range from
Diptyque candles and Alexandra
Llewellyn backgammon sets to a
$21,000 Hublot watch. There’s even an
app that streams the Sand Bar’s playlist
to iPhones anywhere in the world.
Hotels as lifestyle brands are
nothing new, but it’s an unusually
ambitious program for a family-owned
property of just 37 rooms. It helps
that operating duties are shared with
the Oetker Collection, managing
partners of the property. Like Eden
Rock, Oetker’s other hotels—which
include Le Bristol in Paris, the
Lanesborough in London, and the
Hôtel du Cap Eden-Roc in France—
are quintessential to their locales.
Few people know how to cater to
the tastes of the international leisure
class better than Vongerichten. At the
helm of the Sand Bar since 2011, he is
as much a fixture at Eden Rock as the
Matthews family or any of the hotel’s
regulars. Enthusiastic, open, and
utterly without pretense, he chatted
with me at Rémy Bar, lamenting the
loss of his five-ton oven in the storm
(submarine-style steel doors made
of six-inch-thick steel now protect
the kitchen from future storm surges);
discussing his revamp of the menu
to focus on freshness and wellness;
and extolling the bounty of St. Bart’s
clear, clean water.
Using locally caught seafood and
produce imported from neighboring
islands, the Sand Bar serves a sort of
greatest hits of resort dining and
global flavors—all executed with
classic Jean-Georges polish. For lunch,