Sofitel London St James review

Wild Honey St James is the hotel's starred table. Chef Anthony Demetre cooks modern British food with classic French technique and British produce, and the MICHELIN Guide lists it with one star in its 2026 Great Britain and Ireland selection. The guide calls it a brasserie de luxe and singles out the room itself, a Grade II listed former banking hall at the heart of the old Cox & Co. headquarters. Dinner runs Tuesday to Saturday from 17:00 to 21:30, and lunch Wednesday to Friday from 12:00 to 15:00. On Sunday and Monday it is closed.

For a lighter meal, Bistrot at Wild Honey serves a seasonal bistronomy menu on the same chef's concept; it opened in April 2024, and its hours are not published, so check it is open if your free night is a Sunday or a Monday. From May to September, the Bistrot on the Terrace adds a summer pop-up. Afternoon tea is served in The Rose Lounge, with exclusive teas and Champagne, by head pastry chef Lerrick Coelho, and includes a Phantom of the Opera Afternoon Tea. After dinner, the St James Bar is an intimate cocktail bar that the hotel calls award-winning, without naming the award.

The Sofitel Spa is spread across three floors. The hotel's brochure counts four treatment rooms, one of them a dedicated couples' suite, and the official spa page adds a Turkish hammam, a steam room, a jacuzzi for two and a relaxation space. The hammam is private, with a centrally heated marble treatment bed, and Sothys performs its signature Sensations Orientales ritual in a hammam suite here. Treatments use Sothys, Codage and HydraFacial, and the Su-Man facials are exclusive to this hotel.

The spa opens on Monday from 10:00 to 17:00 and from Tuesday to Sunday from 10:00 to 18:30. The hotel's own pages name no treatment designed for two, so when you book, ask for the couples' suite by name and for time in the jacuzzi afterwards. There is no pool and no sauna listed. The Sofitel FIT gym, on the first floor, is for hotel guests only and open to them 24 hours, with Technogym equipment and personal trainers on request. No minimum age is published for the spa and the hotel welcomes families, so if you want the hammam to feel like yours, ask for an early weekday slot.

The hotel has 183 rooms, 21 of them suites, designed by Pierre-Yves Rochon, who also led the 2020 renovation. The view decides the choice. Classic, Superior and Luxury rooms carry no view on Accor's pages. The Premium Luxury Room, 32 m², is the first category with one: Accor promises views over Waterloo Place or the elegance of Pall Mall, and there are 29 of these rooms. Every room has an espresso machine, a kettle and a minibar.

For an anniversary, look at the suites. The Studio Suite and the Junior Suite, 35 m² each with a king bed, look onto Waterloo Place. The four Prestige Suites are light-filled corner suites over Waterloo Place or Pall Mall. There is a single Suite 70, at 79 m², and a single Opera Suite, at 109 m² with a dressing room, a living area, a kitchen and a dining space; both face Waterloo Place and were reimagined in the 2020 renovation. The MICHELIN Guide mentions further work on the Opera Suite and the St James Suite, so ask about it when you book either.

The hotel stands at 6 Waterloo Place, in St James's, in the City of Westminster. The building was completed in 1923 for Cox & Co., the army's banking agency, to designs by E. Keynes Purchase and Durward Brown; the bank later became Cox's & King's and was merged into Lloyds Bank. During the Second World War, its bomb-proof room kept the King's stamp collection safe. Sofitel began turning it into a hotel in 2002.

The MICHELIN Guide places it just around the corner from Piccadilly Circus station, which Accor puts 300 m away, a 5-minute walk, on the Bakerloo and Piccadilly lines. London Charing Cross is 500 m, 8 minutes on foot, and London Waterloo 2 km, 20 minutes on foot. The hotel's brochure gives about 15 minutes by tube to Victoria, Euston, Paddington and St Pancras International, and about 50 minutes to each of Heathrow, Gatwick and London City airports. Measured in a straight line, the City at Bank is 3.1 km away. In summer, the hotel prepares picnic baskets for St James's Park.