FOOD & WINE CLASSIC - CHARLESTON

Join Us September 27-29, 2024 The Food & Wine Classic in Charleston is the premier three day culinary experience on the East Coast showcasing hospitality, foodways, culture, and history of the Holy City.

- S.PELLEGRINO

Peninsula, the Emory, and the Mandarin Oriental, Mayfair (the group's second hotel in the capital, scheduled to open this fall). Others have been totally refurbished, such as the beloved Beaumont (doubles from $886), which has had a glow-up and added 29 rooms in an adjacent building. But all of them have been unveiled later than anticipated.

Only one year behind schedule, but perhaps the most ambitious, is the Singapore-based Raffles group's takeover of the Old War Office on Whitehall. This gargantuan, $1.8 billion project turned a 580,000-square-foot municipal building into a 760,000-square-foot luxury hotel, while somehow preserving the historical spirit of the place where Winston Churchill once worked.

Arriving at Raffles London at the OWO (doubles from $1,260), mere steps from Trafalgar Square, I entered a hallway dominated by a grand marble stairway, over which hangs a 26-foot Murano glass chandelier. Though the interior has been softened with carpets and lanterns, the building's sturdy civic bones shine through, and I could easily picture government employees rushing along its vast corridors, in and out of meeting rooms. Those oncedusty offices are now huge bedrooms and suites, with curtains, lighting, and TVs all controlled by an iPad that, in my case, always seemed to get lost in the high-thread-count sheets.