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Radisson RED V&A Waterfront, Cape Town
3 stars
After being kindly invited to stay over for the opening of the Radisson RED in the fancy new art quarter of the V&A Waterfront, I have questions. About silent discos for a start. Like, why? Silent discos, where partygoers wear wireless headphones to plug directly into the DJ and the music, are not silent, friends. Silent discos are loud.
The rest of us are sitting chatting over our rosemary-infused artisanal gin with takeaway-style Mediterranean meals at tables, I mean stations, just near the giant selfie wall near the entrance, with the men in denim kilts and the dressed-up French bulldog and skater types.
But on the dance floor next to us the silent disco revellers in the headphones are jumping around and whooping and whoo-hooing in delight, with not even the mercy of music to drown them out.
Mess. Horror movie even. Like the men in denim kilts. Even Kanye couldn’t make kilts work, but no one told the manager. Except he’s not a manager, he’s a curator and it’s not a kitchen, it’s a KTCHN and, when you escape upstairs to your room it’s not a room, it’s a studio.
The RED, you see, is more than a hotel. It’s your private, loft-style apartment with cool staff, where you download the app and check yourself in and negotiate the space cash free as you come and go. Except you don’t, not really. We all know that. There are as many staff serving you as at any fancy hotel. It’s dress-up hipster for the moneyed classes and a cool new meeting spot for the rich kids.
But one should not judge a hotel by its opening.
The dining room staff are lovely and the food is fine and as vegetarian friendly as meat friendly. The rooftop bar is every kind of spectacular and the design of the new Zeitz MOCAA museum is on fleek from up there, as is the Mountain. If you can get past the pop-pink hallway carpets, the red, graphic-design-inspired rooms are yummy and everything is exceptionally modern looking, comfortable and functional and different from the other hotels on the elite strip. Till you try and bring the night blind down before drawing the curtains and it doesn’t work, because it has been hurriedly installed and no one checked before sending the press in.
The hotel will settle in and decent parties will be had here, I’m sure, but it felt like the Wizard of Oz, where the Wiz is, in the end, just a rich white uncle wielding some technology and a marketing strategy.
- Blignaut was a guest of Radisson RED V&A Waterfront. Studios range from R2 900 to R4 400 a night. For more information, visit radissonred.com/cape-town
