It’s the wild tales about celebrity guests that have helped give The Portobello Hotel in Notting Hill London its raffish, alluring reputation. Within these walls, the legend goes, Johnny Depp and Kate Moss bathed in a Victorian tub filled with 36 bottle of champagne. Here too, Alice Cooper smuggled his boa constrictor into his room, feeding it with live mice bought from a nearby pet store.
Keith Richards supposedly ‘borrowed’ a chair from here (it was returned later), Van Morrison would apparently check in for weeks to write songs (he actually lived nearby) and Robbie Williams reputedly asked (but was refused) to buy the circular bed in his room.
Rock musicians in particular flocked to this place after its opening in the early 1970s – freewheeling Portobello Road being one attraction, the number of recording studios nearby another. Tina Turner was so impressed by The Portobello that she bought the house next door.
The Portobello Hotel
This bed and breakfast hotel, which claims to be the first ‘boutique’ establishment in London, is happy to be known as a bolthole for the rich and famous, and – perhaps a little tongue-in-cheek – asks its ordinary (our word, not theirs!) guests, that if they see a famous face relaxing in the sitting room, ‘to please allow them to simply enjoy their stay’.
We can record that we spotted no A-listers during our stay – although we did have a pleasant conversation with two American ladies at breakfast. All this rich history is great fun, but in 2025 does The Portobello pass the test as a comfortable, characterful hotel?
You find the place after a ten minute walk from Notting Hill Gate down Kensington Park Road, on a quiet street, Stanley Gardens. The 21 rooms are spread over two neo-classical mansions, and the back of the hotel backs onto some lovely private gardens.
Once within the front door, the welcome is warm, and the atmosphere of informality is set. You start feel like a returning guest to a relaxed, somewhat unconventional country house.
If the reception room is relatively understated, the sitting room next door – very much the hub of the hotel, where breakfast is taken and evening drinks (with honesty bar) consumed – is a colourful, eclectic mix of furniture, paintings, and styles.
The Portobello Hotel Design
Minimalist it is not. The walls are of red ochre, and a handful of dark wooden tables and chairs are scattered around. Leather armchairs are adorned by brightly-coloured embroidery cushions, with portraits of angular faces on them, inspired by the brilliant Mexican artist Frida Kahlo. The floor to ceiling draped curtains are a lovely red, blue and green floral-like design. It has a London club feel here, too, through its portraits on opposite walls, depictions of famous politicians of the late 19th century by the famous caricaturist Carlo Pellegrini, who worked for Vanity Fair and went by the pseudonym of ‘Ape’.
Since 2014 The Portobello has been a member of Peter and Jessica Frankopan’s Curious Group of hotels, others including the 17th century Canal House in Amsterdam and L’Hotel, Paris, famously the final resting place of Oscar Wilde.
Quirky it certainly is. Our Marvellous room on the ground floor – the other categories are Good, Better, Great, Outstanding and the Best – had two unusual aspects. One was the deepest (freestanding) bath tub we had ever encountered – a soothing, immersing experience when in it, but something of a struggle to get up and out of. The second was in fact a first – the first time in living memory when we’ve checked into a quality hotel to find no television. ‘We believe in the power of switching off … and allowing you more downtime’, the hotel literature explains and, as avid readers, we have no problem at all with that.
It was a lovely room decked out in similar ochre colour to the sitting room, with a large, half-canopied tester bed, comfortable country house style sofa, and cream-coloured draped curtains on floor-to-ceiling windows looking out onto those splendid gardens.
We were allowed a peek into a couple of other rooms in the interests of research – The Best (Kate and Johnny’s) and an Outstanding. The giant circular bed in the former was impressive, but actually we preferred the latter, with its beautiful blue wallpaper with peacock motif, and its hidden closet (you pressed on a ‘bookcase’ to open it). On the walls by the staircase leading to the upper floors were a large number of paintings of military men on Stubbs-like horses.
Breakfast in the sitting-room was unusual too. It was of the buffet variety, but the cheeses, hams, croissants and juices were laid out on the shelves of a glass-fronted wooden cabinet on the wall, which also housed fine crystal glasses and an intriguing collection of books, and games like Cluedo and Scrabble. A menu board hung on the wall offered porridge, a Full English and smoked salmon and eggs – but the buffet was substantial enough.
A Trip Down Memory Lane
Both of us had fond memories of life in this neighbourhood, albeit many years ago – Roger the closer in Elgin Crescent, just a few minutes down the road. So we set out to travel the length of Portobello Road, with its famous street market, to find out how much had changed.
The answer was very little.
Thirty years ago, Roger’s local cinema, The Electric, was but a 200-yard walk from his front door, across Kensington Park Road and turning left onto Portobello Road. In 2025 this splendid Edwardian Baroque picture house is still going strong, apparently ever more luxurious inside. Two bookshops – The Notting Hill Bookshop and Books for Cooks – are still there, the former with a café of the same name adjoining it, perhaps cashing in on the famous film which came out in 1999.
Chai Guys Bakehouse
Along the road the market bustles (this on a Wednesday) much as it ever did, with antiques, fashion, vintage clothing, handmade goods and an even more diverse collection of food outlets. We elected to pop into one of the recently-opened of the latter, Chai Guys Bakehouse, for lunch.
The Chai Guys company was founded by Eileen’s nephew Gabriel Unger and his business partner Abhilash Jobanputra. The Bakehouse is just the latest Chai Guys outlet, following on from the huge success of their stalls/shops in Spitalfields, Covent Garden and Canary Wharf. Chai tea – a black brewed beverage, made delicious by mixing in spices like cardamom, cinnamon, cloves and ginger and adding milk – is becoming all the rage in the capital (and beyond).
The vibe here is welcoming, youthful and cosmopolitan. The Chai Guys slogan is ‘probably the best Chai in London’, and we could vouch for that after our respective cups of Masala and Karak Chai. The Bakehouse also offers a tempting array of both sweet and savoury pastries: Eileen enjoyed a spicy aubergine pain suisse, while Roger went for the samosa croissant.
After this pleasant pit stop, we ventured into Daunts bookshop (not there in our day), looked for shoes (unsuccessful) and a hat (successful – a Panama). We then headed back to The Portobello for some peace and quiet in our TV-free room.
The Shed Restaurant
In the evening we strolled up to Notting Hill Gate to join our London-living family for dinner at The Shed restaurant. It’s one of five restaurants in the capital, the ‘Local and Wild’ group, opened since 2012 by three brothers, Richard, Oliver and Gregory Gladwin.
They all grew up on their family’s farm and vineyard in West Sussex and, inspired by their countryside background, wanted to create a series of seasonal, sustainable eating establishments in the capital. The ingredients in their restaurants are all carefully sourced, from local growers, foraging in hedgerows and woodlands, and fish from small scale English fishermen.
The place was buzzing, especially for midweek. We plunged into the A La Carte menu, selecting a variety of small and large dishes – from goat’s cheese mousse tartlet, through handmade Sussex chorizo with hung yoghurt and crispy kale, to Cotswold chicken with tahini yoghurt and smoked quinoa. The mocktails – apple elderflower and mint fizz in particular – were most refreshing on a hot summer’s night.
A comfortable night’s sleep in our Marvellous room, and we were back on the train to Suffolk the next morning. It had been a short Walk on the Wild Side, but certainly not at Heartbreak Hotel on Desolation Row (we can’t be sure if Lou Reed or Bob Dylan ever stayed at The Portobello – Elvis certainly didn’t!).
The Portobello Hotel London
For more information about The Portobello hotel visit its website: www.portobellohotel.com.