We’re in the cocktail bar at Glasgow’s boutique hotel, a darkly decadent room of chandeliers, velvet furniture and gold-flecked wallpaper. The cocktail menu, which looks like an edition of Vogue, is glossy, slightly breathless and highly alcoholic. My wife opts for a Martini Espresso, but tempting as that is, I think caffeine at this time of the evening will spell a sleepless night.
No problem, says our friendly waiter, Callum, I think we can make you a decaff. He sets off to confirm, and quickly returns to tell us that the decaff beans arrived yesterday. Minutes later we’re served two dark, velvety and very lovely cocktails and are congratulated on being the hotel’s first ever decaff Martini Espresso customers.
I think they could catch on. House of Gods opened in the spring, billing itself as Glasgow’s first maximalist hotel. It has 28 rooms on four floors, and a glass-enclosed roof restaurant full of (plastic) flowers and statues – they call it The Sacred Garden.
Brothers Mike and Ross Baxter opened their first House of Gods, an award-winning 22-room property, in Edinburgh five years ago. They followed this spring with the Glasgow venue in a sandstone former warehouse that became a popular deli, then Chinese restaurant, in Glasgow’s Merchant City. The Merchant City – so called because of its links to shipping owners, textile and tobacco barons – is one of the city’s liveliest areas, with hip bars and restaurants, and independent shops.
It’s also a coup.