West Lodge Park Hotel

Leave the M25 car park at junc­tion 24 and enter a dif­fer­ent world. Two minutes later you are passing through the gates of West Lodge Park Hotel into peace and serenity. On the pic­tur­esque quarter mile drive, the con­trast between mod­ern and tra­di­tional becomes marked, with the world fam­ous arbor­etum on the left and a heli­port to the right. It’s a meta­phor for the hotel itself — tra­di­tional stand­ards of com­fort yet thor­oughly mod­ern in out­look and so con­veni­ent for London.

West Lodge Park was prob­ably built in the 15^th cen­tury as a hunt­ing lodge for game­keep­ers pro­tect­ing the deer on the royal estates of nearby Enfield Chase. It is repor­ted that Queen Eliza­beth I her­self enjoyed hunt­ing here. Re-built in 1838, it first became a hotel in 1924, but its full poten­tial was only real­ised in 1945 when it was pur­chased by Edward Beale, grand­father of the present Man­aging Dir­ector, Andrew. Edward also foun­ded the world fam­ous arbor­etum, which boasts 800 dif­fer­ent spe­cies of tree in 10 acres of mag­ni­fi­cent wood­land. Per­fect for that after din­ner stroll.

The hotel motto is “Gen­er­a­tions of Excel­lence” which neatly sums up the past 60 years of fam­ily own­er­ship. Fol­low­ing con­sid­er­able invest­ment, the hotel is now the highest rated AA 4-star hotel in north Lon­don, Hert­ford­shire and sur­round­ing counties.

Its Cedar res­taur­ant has held two AA rosettes for four con­sec­ut­ive years which speaks volumes for the con­sist­ency required of a great res­taur­ant. That suc­cess is down to Exec­ut­ive chef, Wayne Turner and his team, together with Res­taur­ant man­ager, Steve Sims. Accord­ing to Wayne, the found­ing prin­ciple of their food is the use of local pro­duce. The hotel web­site proudly gives hyper­links to each of its main sup­pli­ers and actu­ally states the dis­tance these pro­du­cers are from the hotel –now that’s real trans­par­ency in food miles.

The sup­pli­ers list includes Café du Monde, who sup­ply all the Beale Hotels group’s require­ments for cof­fee and coffee-making equip­ment and have done so for many years. For ban­quet­ing and con­fer­ences, the hotel uses a bulk fil­ter brew­ing sys­tem with stain­less steel cafetières. Cafetières are an option in the res­taur­ant with Kenya cof­fee and for those guests pre­fer­ring spe­ci­al­ity cof­fees, there is a Gag­gia espresso machine using Grand Cru beans. The hotel has also just star­ted using Newby teas, dis­trib­uted by Café du Monde.

Accord­ing to gen­eral Man­ager, David Seward, the choice of cof­fee sup­plier is one of the sim­pler decisions he has had to make: “Like so many of our sup­pli­ers, it comes down to the ‘people thing’. With Café du Monde we are deal­ing with real people who care as much about our busi­ness as their own. The qual­ity of cof­fee is unsur­passed and extremely pop­u­lar with our guests. Add to that a very respons­ive back-up ser­vice and you will soon see why we are so happy with our bever­age arrangements.”

| testimonial | Tags: banqueting, banquetingfeature