Clerkenwell, neighboring on tiny Soho, the buttoned-up City and art-damaged Shoreditch, is ground zero for London’s design and creative communities, chock full of imaging labs, ad agencies, and design firms. Many of our customers will have business in and around Clerkenwell, and now they have a convenient place to stay as well. Not that there’s a shortage of hip new hotels in London—this is still the most competitive hotel market in the world—but there’s always room for another good one, especially in this once boutique-shy neighborhood.

Supermarket heir Mark Sainsbury has gutted one of Clerkenwell’s grimiest Victorian warehouses to make room for this hotel, officially known as the Zetter Restaurant & Rooms—and not inaccurately, we might add, as the entire ground floor is devoted to the restaurant, in order to draw as many local diners as possible. In this it is a success; the atmosphere is less that of a hotel dining room and more that of, well, exactly what it is—an excellent and smartly designed Italian restaurant populated by impossibly cool locals.

The rooms are no afterthought, though. A bright crimson spiral staircase negotiates the bright five-story atrium and delivers guests to rooms that are equally bright, if not quite as spacious and airy. The Kubrickian whiteness of the decor is mitigated by sparing splashes of bright color, and the occasional piece of antique furniture. Penguin paperbacks and web-enabled satellite TV prov... more