WLC new entry: Refuel Bar and Restaurant

Soho Hotel Refuel Bar and Restaurant – Wine List Confidential Score: 84.6

The Refuel Bar and restaurant within the “swanky” Soho Hotel (fourth venue of the Firmdale Hotels group) is described by the Telegraph as “an electric hangout where sparks fly even when not busy”. The same sparks are not to be found on its wine list.

‘Perfunctory’ is the best description that can offered. Refuel’s list is not without some good-quality bottles, but this is sheer box-ticking to our mind: key French appellations? Check. Provence rosé? Check. Mendoza Malbec? Check. Pinot Grigio? Gavi? Checkity check. No one is showing much in the way of oenophilia here.

The cruelly perceptive critic Tanya Gold observed in her recent Spectator review of Refuel that the Soho Hotel is an actor’s hotel: “They come for press junkets,” she says, “and interviews that reveal nothing because there is nothing to reveal; in fact, I have long suspected that this consuming nothingness … is the point of them; anything to evade reality and bring forth the realm of stupid. So it doesn’t matter that the Soho Hotel doesn’t know what it is; that is a benefit, quite possibly a design.”

This would explain the wine list.

To view the full Refuel Bar and Restaurant Wine List Confidential entry, including individual category scores and wine recommendations, click here.

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