Straight Up: The Crystal Bar at The Wellesley Hotel Knightsbridge

The original Hyde Park Corner tube station; a branch of Pizza Express… the past iterations of the Edwardian townhouse where The Wellesley hotel now stands don’t bode particularly well for its status as a five-star destination.

Neither does its size, if you’re impressed by cavernous lobbies, four-digit-square-foot spas and more eateries than you can count on one hand. The art deco-themed Knightsbridge hotel has just 36 rooms, not so much as a single sauna, and you can pace its mirrored lobby in the time it takes to say “Fat Sam’s grand slam”.

There is just one bar, The Crystal Bar, which boasts just four bar stools, and the adjoining cigar terrace and lounge opposite are bijoux to say the least. But good things come in small packages, and this hotel is actually a bit of a gem – if you can get over the stench of cigar smoke that greets you as you walk in, and lingers like an over-attentive waiter.

The pong comes courtesy of Europe’s largest hotel humidor – the Wellesley’s proud, and I suspect only, claim to size-related fame. Although not to my taste, the Cubans being pored over by shiny-shoed businessmen are in keeping with the theme of opulent jazz-age glamour.

Corridors are lined with black-and-white pictures of silver-screen stars, suites are named after the likes of Charlie Chaplin, Noel Coward and Cecil Beaton, and there’s a preponderance of gleaming surfaces and bronze deco motifs just ripe for Instagramming.

The bar itself is decked out in navy leather, with polished-wood and snakeskin-panelled walls (nothing screams decadence like a snakeskin-panelled wall), and a vast blue crystal chandelier, all presided over by a portrait of a cigar-smoking Winston Churchill.

To celebrate the Wellesley’s fifth anniversary, the bar has devised five new cocktails, each one inspired by an aspect of its offering - from cigars to jazz to the Rolls-Royce that ferries guests around.

I chose the Ella Fitzgerald, which proved a potent way to end Dry January. The menu promised Chivas Regal 12, vanilla syrup, hibiscus citron tea and Mandarine Napoleon, but my post-teetotal tastebuds could only discern the booze. My date, as always, ordered the closest thing he could find to an Old Fashioned – here it comes with a dash of vanilla and cinnamon, of which he approved.

I sipped my Ella with just enough of a grimace to prompt our charming waiter to recommend the Miss Disaronno which, despite sounding like a amaretto-sponsored stripper, proved a pleasant, gently effervescent blend of pineapple, Disaronno and champagne. Like a posh alcopop.

The Crystal Bar is far from the biggest or most fashionable hotel bar in town, but, much like Bugsy Malone himself, it has a style of its own. Cosy, glamorous and off-the-beaten track, it’s also an excellent spot for people-watching.

You can sit and hypothesise about the deals being done between the businessmen murmuring over whisky and Cubans. It would also be a safely obscure place for an illicit tryst, I mused, clocking the ginormous diamonds – both his and hers – of the couple canoodling on the sofa next to us. Unless your other half was to walk in; there’s absolutely nowhere to hide. You’d have to blame it on Ella Fitzgerald.

11 Knightsbridge, London SW1X 7LY; thewellesley.co.uk

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