They call it a “glow-up”, a makeover with transformative abilities, and these days it applies to neighbourhoods as well as A-list slebs, reality TV stars and Pomeranians in Louis Vuitton prams. Queensway is experiencing one right now , bolstered by an anchor-brand hotel at one end — Britain’s first Six Senses luxury wellness hotel — and an anchor-brand restaurant — The Park — at the other, and it heralds a rejuvenation of an area that has often been thought of — unfairly, I think — as a slightly poor relation of Notting Hill . Our business editor Jonathan Prynn has been monitoring the gentrification of Queensway for more than a decade, but this summer it is actually starting to seriously take shape.
The Park is Jeremy King’s second big launch of the year — following his Le Caprice reboot, Arlington , and where the corner table is still fought over by media bigwigs — and it has already become a destination eatery for local residents as well as their highfalutin’ neighbours on the south side of Hyde Park. Four years ago, in between lockdowns, I was given a virtual tour of the new Six Senses hotel, in a marketing suite behind the mid-Covid carcass of the old Whiteleys, the former department store (complete with its colonnaded Grade II listed façade). It didn’t just look extraordinary, it also looked completely at odds with the ugly maze of fast-foot outlets, bookies and mobile-phone repair pop-ups that still littered the rest of Queensway.
These taw.