The Pilgrm is 73 rooms at 25 London Street, three minutes from Paddington station, in Victorian terraced houses the Thrasyvoulou family had owned for fifteen years before rebuilding them. Part of it traded as the Royal Norfolk hotel from the late nineteenth century. Jason Catifeoglou, who had run The Zetter, went in with Andreas Thrasyvoulou, founder of myhotels, and Steph Thrasyvoulou, and put roughly 4.5 million pounds into stripping a hotel back to what a guest uses. It opened in November 2017. The Sheffield studio 93ft did the interiors and much of the furniture, and the salvage is the point: nineteenth-century parquet from an old army gym, lamps out of an old psychiatric house, reclaimed cast-iron radiators, a staircase the hotel dates at 200 years.
There is no reception. You check in online and collect a key at the ground-floor café, behind whoever is buying coffee. The house runs to five wings, so no two bedrooms match, and categories differ by floor area and bed, not finish. Bunk is about 7 sqm with stacked singles and no television, Nook 7 to 10 sqm for one person, Snug about 12 sqm with a double, Comfy about 14 sqm with a king or super-king. No room has a bath, desk, minibar or air conditioning. Pantries on each floor cover tea and coffee, the water is free, and about 150 living plants and an art collection run through the building.
Food is on the first floor, in The Lounge, with brunch to two on weekdays and three at weekends and a terrace over the street. Evenings belong to an incubator kitchen programme, a rolling run of guest chefs: Nargisse Benkabbou's Moroccan Ladeed in February, Marios Miliorellis's Greek Rho from March to August, and from 17 September to late December, Duda Diner, the Malaysian cooking of Hakeem and Zura Ahmad. Cocktails come from Untitled Drinks, the team behind Bar Termini and 69 Colebrooke Row, the wine list is curated by Fiona Beckett, and the coffee downstairs is Monmouth. The lounge and café are open to non-residents.
The trade-offs are size and heat. Rooms are small even by London standards, and guest feedback divides on whether the rate matches the square metres. There is no air conditioning, only fans, which is fine most of the year and punishing in a heatwave. London Street is busy and has pubs on it, so front rooms carry noise, though the hotel will move you to the back if it can. No room has step-free access, and there is no spa, gym, parking or room service. Take it if you would rather spend your money on London than on a bedroom you will barely use, and if five wings and a restored staircase read as a feature.
