A Weekend at Botanic Sanctuary

Juwelina Paris was invited to experience Botanic Sanctuary as guests of the hotel. This article is part of that collaboration, though the opinions, and the second scone, are entirely our own.

There are hotels you stay in, and there are hotels you plan the trip around. Botanic Sanctuary is the second kind. So when the invitation arrived to spend a weekend there, we did not deliberate for long. We packed lightly, expected a great deal, and were still not quite prepared.

The short version: it is a centuries-old monastery beside a botanical garden, it is a member of The Leading Hotels of the World, and it wears that title the way the best luxury always does: quietly. Cloistered courtyards, old stone, gardens you can hear birds in while standing in the middle of a city, staff who remember your name by the second morning. This is five-star hospitality with the volume turned down and every detail turned up. The long version follows, and it is mostly about food.

Book the high tea before you book the room

The high tea is served in the old monastery kitchens, which sounds like a gimmick and is instead the best room in the hotel. It begins with a glass of Veuve Clicquot, which is the correct way to begin anything after one o’clock. Then finger sandwiches, scones still warm, and a procession of pastries from Roger Van Damme, who builds desserts the way other people build architecture. We ordered the silver needle white tea, moved on to an Earl Grey sharpened with kaffir lime, and stopped pretending we were leaving before five. It runs Thursday through Sunday afternoons and it books out. This is not a high tea you improvise.

Cross the courtyard for dinner

Fine Fleur is the hotel’s Michelin-starred dining room: two chefs, Jacob Jan Boerma and Thomas Diepersloot, an open kitchen you will watch between courses like theatre, and cooking that takes local produce somewhere quietly global. Every plate balanced freshness against a very Belgian finesse. We went in curious and came out silent, which is the highest compliment we give a kitchen. One of the finest dinners we have had in Europe, and we say that as people who argue about this professionally.

Dress for a monastery with a Michelin star

The rule is the one that works everywhere: one strong thing, everything else quiet. Candlelight in the old kitchens loves gold hoops. Fine Fleur at night justifies the sculptural earrings you save for occasions. In rooms this considered, your good pieces are not showing off; they are simply keeping up.

The unglamorous tip that changes everything

Plan the tables first and the trains after. High tea runs Thursday to Sunday, Fine Fleur Wednesday to Saturday, and neither waits for the disorganised. The city will still be there. The scones will not.

Our thanks to Botanic Sanctuary for the invitation, and for setting a standard of luxury we will now, unreasonably, hold every hotel to. See you in the cloister garden. We will be the ones not checking out.