The Garden Room at The Lanesborough

The Garden Room is The Lanesborough's cigar lounge, screened from the traffic of Hyde Park Corner by planting and glass. It is a covered terrace, open all year, with a fireplace, heaters and blankets for colder evenings. The design studio 1508 London is reworking it in warm timber tones, and in the meantime the house trades from a covered terrace pavilion on Grosvenor Crescent.

Cigars are the point of the room. A walk-in humidor holds Cuban and pre-Castro cigars, and the drinks list is built around them: rare whiskies, prestige Cognacs and aged rums, with the hotel's Lanesborough Paradis collection of Cognacs and Armagnacs, some of them from the 18th century. A modern European menu of light dishes runs late, and the hotel's head of cigars hosts a masterclass each month.

The room is available for private hire through the hotel's events team, and it works well as a late reception after dinner elsewhere in the house or as a small evening for friends who smoke. It opens at 5pm and trades until 2am from Monday to Saturday, and until midnight on Sunday. Cigarettes are not permitted, and after 9pm the house asks at least half of any party to take a cigar.