Seven years in the making, the most posh urban hotel to debut in Vietnam, ever, seeks to redefine the luxury landscape across the country, setting new benchmarks in culinary appeal with restaurants that have designs on Michelin stars and a spa that’s as visually stunning as it is ultimately restorative.
Commanding the upper and lower floors of the 39-storey Times Square tower, each of the hotel’s rooms and suites is a painstaking exploration of Italian elegance, and its prime location in Saigon’s storied District 1 insists on a role to play in any new story to be told about the one-time ‘Pearl of the Orient’.
GUEST ROOMS AND SUITES
The hotel’s 12 categories of accommodation are amongst the most spacious in the city, with its 224 rooms ranging from 43-53 square meters, 62 suites starting at 63 square meters and topping out at a palatial suite with 313 square meters.
The rooms and suites defy uniformity and understatement. Instead, Italy’s leading design houses – including Colombostile, Giorgetti, Visionnaire, Poltrona Frau and Cassina – have collaborated on the collection. Each room exhibits its own personality, from the classical and sophisticated, to the whimsically romantic, fanciful and sassy.
Floor-to-ceiling windows show off a dynamic city that’s evolving into one of Asia’s rising stars, replete with views of the storied Saigon River, and the reaches of the Mekong Delta. Every expanse in the hotel, from windows and walls, to floors and ceiling, makes an impression.
In some rooms, exquisite Italian silks beg consideration of the walls just as hand-laid mosaic tiles do in another. There are leather divans fit for silver screen actresses while chandeliers hang from mirrored medallions. Beds are dressed in Frette linens at 400 and 600 thread counts while marble baths come complete with amenities by Chopard in rooms and Hermès or Acqua di Parma in suites.
Every room features a walk-in or a walk-through closet, and all of the technology you’d expect – from Cisco voIP telephones to 46- to 55-inch flat-screens – to some that you wouldn’t, such as televisions that sink into consoles so as not to offend the view.
The hotel’s published room rates start at USD 350 and rise to USD 12,000 and 15,000 for its singular Saigon Suite and Reverie Suite respectively.
DINING
The same fierce attention to detail that defines the rooms and suites is evident in each of the hotel’s four, ambitious dining venues. Three of the restaurants celebrate the culinary arts of France, China and Italy and a fourth, The Long @ Times Square, is an East Asian interpretation of the timeless sidewalk cafés of Europe.
Café Cardinal, the hotel’s all-day dining venue, beats at the heart of the hotel in an airy, three-story space on the sixth floor. A deck of the seventh floor main lobby sweeps in overhead. Great banks of windows open onto the resort-like outdoor terrace. Its extensive menu is largely French, with deliberate detours into complementary Western and Asian cuisines during breakfast and lunch service.
Two stories below, jade, vermilion and gold set the stage for one of the city’s most sophisticated dining experiences at The Royal Pavilion. A celebration of fine Cantonese dining, the 200-seat restaurant boasts views of a colonial-era palace and age-old shophouses on Nguyen Hue Boulevard below, with open seating in a decidedly East Asian setting and more secluded quarters in a warren of nine private rooms.
At R&J, inspired by all things Italy, the subterranean restaurant serves traditional Italian dishes marked by subtle, creative pivots off contemporary culinary trends. Its setting is as passionate as its inspiration, with walls of vibrant Italian mosaics to ornate candelabras and a whimsical collection of deliberately different dining chairs that celebrate 40 distinctive corners of Italy.
Upstairs at street level, The Long @ Times Square is a sidewalk café par excellence, running between Saigon’s two most storied streets, Nguyen Hue and Dong Khoi, on a thoroughfare all its own.
SPA & WELLNESS
Vietnam’s most exclusive city spa, The Spa at The Reverie Saigon is a studied melding of sophisticated, urban luxury and a distinctly European-inspired setting. Its treatment rooms, beauty salon and the adjacent fitness center and swimming pool command 1,200 square meters (12,916 square feet) of the sixth and seventh floors.
Ten private treatment rooms, separate men’s and women’s steam & sauna facilities, four individual rooms for private hair and nail treatments and three semi-enclosed manicure / pedicure areas demarcate The Spa’s particulars. The sixth floor reception area courts a gorgeous elegance in mixed media, with white marble, golden mosaic tiles, rose carpeting and plush leather competing for attention.
The Reverie Saigon is a member of The Leading Hotels of the World.
Comments and reviews