Soy story: Drivers & Dim Sum, Peninsula London
On the stroll from London Victoria station in sensational autumn sunshine there comes the slightly unnerving rasp of a performance car engine. A case of driver-showboating no doubt, but as we’re having problems with Google Maps and directions, this raucous interjection acts like a beacon guiding us to the latest edition of Drivers & Dim Sum at the Peninsula London hotel (on from 11am-2pm).
Do supercars go with Chinese food? Well, having been to the Hampton Court Concours of Elegance recently, it would seem that motoring and culinary experiences go hand in hand, and who can forget that amazing pork and crackling roll at the NEC’s Classic Motor Show a few years ago? So yes, nowadays there is a correlation between food and automotive excellence.
Drivers & Dim Sum began in April at this upmarket Belgravia stopover. The Peninsula hotel chain itself is chaired by Hong Kong billionaire Sir Michael Kadoorie who is a car nut of international renown – his 1931 Bentley 8 Litre Gurney Nutting Sports Tourer won Best Of Show at the 2019 Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance in 2019. The event here is an occasional Sunday occurrence, often in collaboration with an automotive partner, which this time is Topaz Detailing – the world’s most exclusive detailing and paint protection film specialist. In short, they can make your car very shiny.
All video: John Gale Stewart
Within the Peninsula courtyard are a McLaren 765LT, an Aston Martin Valkyrie and a Bugatti Chiron Pur Sport, to name a few, plus one of the hotel’s pair of Rolls-Royce Phantom VIII Series II EWBs Art Fleet. Overlying the Roller’s Peninsula Green colour scheme there’s a vinyl wrap featuring a classic British landscape painting, the work of Brooklyn-based artist Kozo. If you’re staying in the hotel – rooms from £761 a night – within reason you can use one of the Peninsula’s fleet as a taxi; there’s also a Bentley Bentayga, an electrified Austin taxi, a BMW i7 and a LEVC cab. The limit is two miles, but really, from this central location, Shanks’ Pony (on foot) should get you to most sights.
We’re invited down into the tombs – Peninsula’s five-storey basement. Beneath the hotel are spotlessly clean twisting roads that act as a service infrastructure and general car park, and here lay more automotive treasures. Old romantics, perhaps, but a striking blue Porsche 911 on an L-plate would suit our purposes nicely. As would a 2005 Honda NSX – which these days would easily fetch £100,000 in this nick (and check out the recently launched 3.5-litre Judd-powered JAS Sensei by Pininfarina, an updating of the first generation NSX).
Further on, an amiable lad, all of 12 or 13, with fetching Stephen Spielberg film-esque 1980s hairstyle, asks if we’d like to see inside an all-electric Everrati Gulf Edition Porsche 964. “Lead the way,” we say, then add, once the passenger door is open, “Whose is the car?” “It’s my dad’s; he owns Everrati,” is the reply. Everrati is an Oxfordshire-based restomod firm. Prices start at £250,000 and you’ll need a donor car.
All these performance brutes are a world away from the wonderfully bijou Austin Seven that serves as Peninsula’s Coffee Car at ground level and cappuccinos are ordered. Alas the queue for dim sum is rather long and as we gaze over towards the opulence of the very British green Peninsula Rolls-Royce, the idea arrives like a diamond bullet in the forehead. Let’s eschew this foreign scran and get some fish and chips in Soho. Golden Union on Poland Street is the destination, although the cost for haddock and chips, £22.95, is getting towards the Bugatti end of convenience food.
The next Driver & Dim Sum is yet to be announced. Check peninsula.com for details.