New Restaurant at Metropole Hanoi (Vietnam)
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New Restaurant at Metropole Hanoi (Vietnam)
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Category: Asia Pacific - Vietnam - Gourmet restaurants
- Gourmet restaurants
This is a press release selected by our editorial committee and published online for free on 2009-06-10
New ground-floor restaurant at the venerable Sofitel Metropole Hanoi struts her stuff
As Hanoi prepares to celebrate the 1,000th anniversary of its founding in 2010, the city’s venerable relics are primed for prime time. They’ll be ogled like blossoms of fireworks — ahhh, the Temple of Literature, oooh, the Tortoise Tower — from the oldest, mossiest old gate to the stolid exhibitions of the colonial French palaces. But quietly, subversively, Angelina is underfoot.
Angelina is the city’s newest, major restaurant, opening softly late last year, and now with a bang as she struts from the foundation of the Sofitel Metropole Hanoi. Technically, Vietnam’s most intriguing new restaurant is an Italian steakhouse, but a great cut of beef is not the defining emblem of the Angelina experience.
More a lounge, a club, a venue for discreet liaison and high-brow association, Angelina pioneers what Hong Kong already has — a watering hole for the glitterati, and a magnet for the paparazzi. Think Mastroianni, Sinatra. Think Angelina.
“What wasn’t here?” asked Kai Speth, general manager of the Sofitel Metropole Hotel. “We’ve got all the great cultural assets, and accommodation worthy of presidents and princesses. We’ve got great cuisine, no matter your taste. What we didn’t have was a place with verve, that was a little more audacious than it needed to be. And now we do.”
The allure begins at the entrance on Le Phung Hieu Street, where the name of the place in lower case letters is backlit in a lurid red that plays off the immaculate white exterior of the hotel. On the ground floor, a bar commands Angelina’s outside wall, and a stainless steel modular console commands back of the bar — an industrial flourish that says, ‘Hey, this ain’t your l’oncle’s Vietnam.”
Elsewhere on the ground floor, among the bar stools and the 26 seats, a prominent DJ stand and its Pioneer mixing board pump up the volume. A curved glass wall, bursting with cigars, channels aficionados to a room where smoke is king. But if drink’s your thing, behold the stacks of Veuve Cliquot champagne, shielded by plates of glass.
Up one level, bottles of Bordeaux and single malts wall in a low-ceilinged lounge done up in sumptuous reds. The room seats 20 in an environment that’s all plush, and that includes a curvilinear sofa that looks like something out of a sultan’s seraglio. Walls of interactive panels pulsate with abstract light shows.
Up one more level, you’re at eye level with the chandeliers that hang over the bar. The ceiling is silver. The floors are hardwood. A neighboring function room seats 16. If there’s a dominant social aesthetic to Angelina, it’s this: That individuals crave nooks and crannies in crowded places.
“Beyond the obvious pleasures that come from the perfect cocktail, the perfect cigar, and the perfect steak, Angelina is a place for hatching schemes, for seeing and for being seen,” said Speth. “This is Big Hanoi.”
Angelina was a debutante April 16 when a parade of women in high-end, black lingerie modeled La Perla fashions and Hennessey slaked everyone’s thirst. It was billed as a ‘Men’s Night.’ Despite the bodyguards at the door, and the guest list, women did infiltrate the floor. But black lace prevailed; the catwalk was strut; and men had their way with the night and the Hennessey, if nothing else.
“If it can happen in Hanoi, it will happen here,” said Carl Gagnon, the executive assistant manager at the Metropole. “Trust me.”
Of course, there’s food at Angelina, as well — Wagyu Beef Fillet Tartare, Herb Crusted Lamb Rack and a Duet of Slow-Cooked Salmon and Sea Bass et al. The line-up is largely Italian, from zuppa and antipasti to handcrafted pasta to wood-stone fired pizzas. The charcoal grilled menu delivers 250-gram veal chops to 350-gram New York prime sirloin and a 400-gram t-bone.
The food is the raison d’etre at Angelina, but it’s the ambiance, and the possibility of the unexpected, that’s calling out the venue as one of Southeast Asia’s most magnificent social opportunities.
“Social networking is all the rage, whether it’s virtual or in the case of Angelina, in the flesh,” said Gagnon. “Tweet that.”
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