UPSIDE BROWN

THE CLASSIC HOTEL RE-INVENTS ITSELF

When I was a girl, my mother told me that there was only one hotel in London where a lady could respectably stay on her own: Brown's. The Ritz was too ritzy, the Savoy too racy, and you never knew whom you might meet in Claridge's. Brown's, on the other hand, on Albemarle Street, was above reproach. Queen Victoria had been to Brown's; Rudyard Kipling wrote The Jungle Book there; Roosevelts Theodore, Franklin, and Eleanor were all guests. Brown's, in short, was cloaked in a pall of respectability, and, as such, it didn't register on my Richter scale of exciting places to see and be seen.

Fast-forward to 2006. Dear old Brown's, once so chintzy, so English, has been bought by Sir Rocco Forte, who, with the help of his sister, the Honorable Olga Polizzi, has renovated the place and whisked the brown right out of it. Its classicism remains, but the calm, contemporary designpale greens, grays, and creams, Bill Amberg leather in the bar, a dash of silver—makes Brown's, which used to smell of old soup, 2006-sexy. Photographs by Terence Donovan line the bar, which throbs with rum cocktails; big, cool suites have iPod docking stations and plasma flat-screen TVs, and mobile phones are presented to guests after they check in. And then there's the Grill at Brown's, with its comforting wood paneling, where the order of the day is everything English. It's a fantastic power-lunching spot that's affordable; it's magic in a London that's gone crazily expensive.

VICTORIA MATHER