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Grand Hotel Sofia
Sofia Echo Com, 12.11.2004
One effect of frequent business travel is to turn you from a simple hotel guest to a hypercritical hospitality industry guru - after a hundred room nights you become finely tuned to the individual quirks and quality of management of the well-known international chains. Their chain mentality is fine when you want uniform middle ranking services on a mass scale but it eventually palls - the chocolate exactly centred on the pillow as part of the "turn down service" was once meant to surprise and delight, now it is as predictable and unwelcome as a cockroach on the pillow of the old Moscow airport hotel. That is why it is interesting to experience the approach of Sofia's newest independent hotel - and good to report that free from the brand straitjacket imposed on the city's well known luxury hotels, the five star Sofia Grand Hotel turns out to be a tremendous boost at the top end of the Bulgarian hospitality industry. Check in at one of the hotel chains and you are immediately made aware of an irritating two class system - the evolution of the "hotel within a hotel" with a special executive floor with speedy check in/outs - calculated to irritate the mere five-star paying guest. At the Grand the there is no underclass amongst the 109 rooms (plus 13 suites and two Grand suites with terraces) and in the standard room you get more floor space than the junior suites of some of the competitors. If you subscribe to the theory that the location of a hotel is one of its most important features, then the Grand Hotel Sofia wins first position ahead of its competitors in the Bulgarian luxury hotel market. As a guest at the Grand there is no need for the post breakfast taxi queue - if you have an early morning meeting at the Council of Ministers it's on your doorstep, and you can pop into the power ministries as they are all conveniently located within a few steps of the Grand across the City Gardens.
For the business customer the hotel offers state of the art conference facilities for up to 150 delegates. It is rare to see journalists hang around long after news conferences but I can understand why so many remained during our launch - the hotel provided first rate coffee and home made biscuits from its patisserie. The business centre that works under pressure is another rare touchstone of quality - and the Grand's Business Centre is under the unflappable rule of the attractive and memorably named Sofia. If you are obliged to be in Sofia on business in the heat of the summer there is only one place to sit in the shade. Pick your way through the silent yet titanic struggles of the chess-players in the City Gardens, cross under a canopy of green and you are in another cooler world - the Grand Cafe. In the London Ritz, the waiter would bring cucumber sandwiches and Earl Grey - here the natural thing to do is to scan the impressive list of rare rakia, and start with a Sliven pearl 12 year old accompanied by home made fruit ice cream and raspberry sauce. One can easily spend the whole afternoon on the terrace - you can even hook up a laptop (the waiter appeared promptly with the right converter plug) and do some work - the 21st century equivalent of writing in a Viennese cafe. In the evening the menu for Shades of Red (the fine dining restaurant inside) is available on the terrace. My colleagues ordered white fish with baked baby potatoes, a succulent caramelised duck breast with stewed apples chestnut and Madeira sauce, and beef fillet with foie gras over cherry sauce. Good service and well prepared. see source
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