brighton rocks with the new cool of myhotel and zilli
Brighton, so long regarded as the end of the world, is well on its way to becoming the best place to take a weekend break out of London. And with myhotel and Zilli, it's more attractive than ever
When I was a lad, on any sunny Sunday my parents would load up the Ford Anglia with food and, for my father, the crucial PrimaGaz required for making tea every fifteen minutes, and we’d set off for Brighton. In those days it was all B roads mostly and when we eventually passed the stone pillars that said ‘Welcome to Brighton’ a small cheer would come up from behind the fresh copy of Victor and Valiant that I’d had my nose buried in all the way down. If the weather was really good we would sit on the pebbly beach with a windbreak to shield the PrimaGaz, if not then dad and I would go onto one of the two piers, walk to the end and hire a rod and reel. With juicy lugworms for bait, bought from the little shop, we would fish for anything stupid enough to bite. Mostly though we would spend the day untangling our lines from those of the other weekend warriors around us, or try to get our hooks disengaged from the pier’s barnacled metal supports. In the rare gaps between these moments of high drama dad would light the PrimaGaz, make tea and smoke one of the forty or so cigs a day that would soon kill him. Happy days.
Brighton has always been there for Londoners. A short train ride from most of the major stations it was famous for being a Regency hangout for George and his whopping waistline, enormous palace and special ‘sex chair’. Later it became perfect for those looking for naughty weekends away with people not their spouses, its legions of cheap B&Bs perfect for anonymity. Graham Greene used it as a metaphor for, if not hell then at least purgatory, and mods and rockers would kick the stuffing out of each other at weekends. Through it all it kept quiet and to itself and carried on steadily like an old ocean liner.
Recently though Brighton has had a renaissance. A young persons’ town, and a gay centre, its cute old lanes and alleyways now throb to a vibrant café culture and scores of great restaurants, clubs and bars. Some Londoners have second homes; many live permanently here and commute to town. The seagulls wheel overhead, the sun splatters down brightly, if not always warmly, and the sea is a focus for everyone, all drawn by that primeval magic that makes us stand at the railings and just happily stare at the waves.
Part of that renaissance is a brand new, and I mean new from the ground up, boutique hotel from the myhotel team of Andy Tharsyvoulou and New York designer Karim Rashid. Perfectly placed just a few minutes from the railway station and the seafront it’s in a semi-pedestrianised square that gathers sunshine to itself like supermodels gather handbags. If you drive, as we did, the concierge takes your keys and whisks your car away bringing the bags to your room later. This is useful as it leaves your hands free to catch your jaw when you walk inside. Forget traveltaverns, forget blowsy old seaside hotels, this is cutting edge and beautiful. The reception desk is like a Henry Moore sculpture made of steel and all around are curves, colours and tasteful aquariums. Staff are young, crisp, helpful and keen and the place radiates effortless cool with a capital K. The whole place has been designed to be spiritual following the principles of Feng Shui and it works. The second thing you feel, after the welcome kiss of the air-conditioning, is relaxed and finally away from work.
Downstairs is also the home of the Merkaba cocktail bar, a designer dream of plasma screens, fancy stools to fall off of and more aquariums. It’s determinedly different, a theme to be found again in the rooms. First though comes a short ride in a lift whose ambient colour light shifts and sways in a rather soothing, underwater, kind of way preparing you for a small riot of colour when the door opens on your floor. A large Mandela dominates the floor’s lobby while the carpet makes you shield your eyes. Heck even the fire extinguishers are designery; no boring reds here, instead they are pure chrome.
The best bit though is entering your room. Your bed isn’t stuck to a wall or around a corner; it sits in the middle facing the picture window. The window itself has a double seat to let the two of you sit and share the complimentary chocolate cake and strawberries served on crisp white linen as you gaze out into the square below. The silence was deafening so we listened to our iPod plugged into the ceiling speakers. Maybe in this designer heaven we should have been playing whale music, but our taste was more for dinosaurs; Crosby Stills, Nash and Young’s Déjà vu to be precise. It’s a measure of the attention to detail here that the lead supplied to connect our iPod wasn’t just any old lead, but pure white with gold plated contacts for a superior sound.
There was a show back in the 1970’s called Space 1999; it imagined a future (1999 perhaps unsurprisingly) where people lived on the moon in futuristic accommodation. Bright plastics abounded, hairstyles were groovy and there wasn’t a straight wall in the place. And, to judge by the reruns I’ve seen on TV, there wasn’t a straight actor either. This room is like that vision. In what would be the corner, were it not a curve, a recess houses a crystal which changes colour every few seconds. The carpet evolves into a bright orange rubberised floor as it enters the bathroom space, cleverly designed so that it’s an organic part of the room and yet private too. What with all this, the suspended ice-white LCD TV and all the cool magazines neatly lying about it’s pretty hard to leave the room and rejoin Brighton life.
Downstairs at least two famous actors are hanging out in the bar, but we were keen to see Brighton again. Out the door, past the Zilli Cafe and Brasserie which together with Zilli Restaurant is an integral part of the hotel, and into the warren of little lanes packed full of bars, cute shops and cafes. We ambled along enjoying the sites and sounds but our goal was the beach. Here was multicultural Briton in all its glory. Every ethnic group represented and all joyfully united in eating ice creams and fish and chips. Groups of women in full burkas sitting on the stones, the youngest with their faces invisible but their accents those of any London teenager as they demanded money, food and entertainment from long- suffering dad, who was content to just sit in his deckchair. Knots of West Indian families exuberantly shouting and chasing footballs. Giggling Chinese girls and boys flirting in groups and putting 
their hands over their mouths whenever they laughed. The sun was bright and, thanks to an air show up the coast in Eastbourne, every few minutes an old plane would cruise down the shoreline. When a Spitfire went past very low, its engine growling magnificently, I had an almost irrepressible desire to stand to attention and salute it. In fact I would have, but it meant dropping my chips.
Up on the old East pier, the only one left since the West Pier mysteriously burnt down (again), the slot machines were doing great business and I was delighted to see the Penny Falls machines still going strong. I dropped some 2p’s in for old times sake and as usual the pile of coins on the edge of the drop wobbled tantalisingly for a second then defied gravity to stay where they were. Up the end of the pier my old fishing platform had gone, replaced by a funfair featuring a couple of rides so scary I was surprised they were even legal. The Whirling Waltzer was great though, but mysteriously had a pre-recorded tape urging us to ‘scream if you want to go faster’ in a Dutch accent.
By now the sun was waning a bit, and after I had spent all our tokens for the funfair, it was back to myhotel. The bar was getting busy and fancy cars were queuing up outside to drop off beautiful people and this made me a bit self-conscious of the Pound Shop carrier bag full of recently acquired tat I was carrying. I can’t resist a bargain I’m afraid. We scuttled into the lift hoping no one had noticed. Upstairs the room was even more welcoming, the little reading lamps on the bedhead glowing with LED light and the wall crystal throwing shapes onto the ceiling. Some TV, some reading, a luxurious shower and down to the restaurant.
Entering Zilli’s via a curved corridor off the cocktail bar we found it was packed. As box fresh as the hotel and just as smartly designed, it has space for plenty of people and boy does it need it. Brightonians clearly love this place and it’s not hard to see why. Staff are bright and efficient, not letting the number of people faze them one bit from staying positive, happy and efficient. The food has something for everyone with, naturally, an emphasis on fish. Mussels with roasted tomatoes and Big Chips made a great starter, as did a big fat mushroom baked with cheese. I really liked my monkfish wrapped in pancetta with wild mushrooms and polenta and the wife went for a tasty cod in batter with chips. I told her she could have had that earlier but she reckoned it tasted better for not being served in a Styrofoam box. The lamb racks going past looked pert, as did all the bowls of pasta, and you could see the logic of involving Zilli in the myhotel scheme of things, his style of modern Italian is perfectly pitched for the zeitgeist of the place. The room is divided into two halves; a busy buzzy end near the open kitchen and a more cosy, intimate end with subdued lighting. There is also a nice outside area in the square too. Prices aren’t at the mad end of the spectrum but do reflect the quality of the ingredients by being a little above average. Not a problem for most people judging by the vibrant atmosphere and cheerful noise.
Back outside in the square, a Japanese bloke had set up a stage and was making a terrible racket using sampled sounds. A crowd of people had gathered to nod their heads in a knowledgeable way, but for those of us whohad once sat through Hawkwind’s Sonic Attack it all seemed rather dated. Out at the pier a massive firework display was making a more innovative noise and drew us through the streets toward it. Those streets were buzzing in the warm night air with Brighton’s mix of tribes; from cool ex-hippies to clubbers. What they all had in common was a sense of just being out for a laugh and no trouble and we found ourselves in jolly conversation more than once as we wandered about from pub to bar.
The next morning, not too bright and none too early, we went back down to a Zilli’s now configured for breakfast. The sun was back out again and the restaurant showed no signs of the night befores revels. It was crisp and fresh and so, remarkably, was the waiter from last night. “I went to bed at 2a.m,” he told us cheerfully, “and came back on here at 8a.m.” Breakfast, for a mind-bogglingly cheap £4.50, had local sausages and bacon, two perfectly poached eggs, grilled fresh tomatoes and home-made baked beans. While I wolfed that, the wife tucked into a smoked mackerel with poached egg. Soon after we went out for a last wander around the lanes before asking the desk to ‘bring up our car, please’, something I had longed to say for years. As we rolled out of town, passing the Welcome to Brighton signs again. all we could talk about was the remarkable hotel. For any London couple looking for a cool break with the tiniest amount of travelling to get there, myhotel has now made sure that Brighton is very firmly on the map.
Words and pictures: Nick Harman
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