The Fire brigade: how the Chiltern Firehouse became a hotspot for celebrities including Rita Ora and Lindsay Lohan

They came, they saw, they were conquered — celebrities in their droves headed down to the Chiltern Firehouse to mix with André Balazs. Joshi Herrmann on the hotel that lit a match under London
On fire: denizens of Chiltern Firehouse in Marylebone this year, from top left (clockwise), Rita Ora, Kylie Minogue, owner André Balazs, Brooke Cand, Lindsay Lohan; socialite and stylist Roxie Nafousi (Picture: Rex/Getty)
Rex/Getty Images
Joshi Herrmann19 December 2014

How did the former Manchester Square fire station in Marylebone, decommissioned in 2005 by the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority, become a destination of such epic fashionable appeal that it has hosted probably more actors, singers, models and statesmen this year than any other building in the Western world?

By what sorcery has the ladder shed of this fire station — built to accommodate, presumably, the station’s suite of attic ladders, ground ladders, flys, hose straps, pompiers, ladder pipes, halyards, extension ladders and quints — become a VIP bar where Harry Styles elicits immodest looks from lingering socialites and Bill Clinton spins Billie Holiday on wooden decks? And caused local property prices to soar?

To get some answers, I called up a few members of the Fire Brigade — the name for the circle of starry and ambitious regulars — but let’s start at the beginning.

Chiltern Firehouse landed in the arid wasteland of London’s hotel scene and has wiped the floor so comprehensively with the competition that the hotel’s founders are said to be distrustfully mistaking awkwardly attired accountants booking anniversary meals for officers of the Competition Commission.

Some well travelled denizens of the London high life had an inkling of what was coming. The name André Balazs (pronounced ba-lash) meant something to people who had stayed at his hip hotels Chateau Marmont (LA) and The Mercer hotel (New York), and a lot to industry insiders, who revere him as a god.

The 57-year-old has dated Uma Thurman and, reportedly, Kylie and was linked this weekend to Brooke Candy — a 25-year-old American rapper whose level of public nakedness makes Miley Cyrus look like a nun.

Then in May Balazs’s name was being dropped into conversation like he was David Beckham, Lindsay Lohan, Kirsten Dunst, John Cleese or — to pick another A-lister at random — Nigella Lawson. Not random, actually —they were all there, trying to squeeze their frames through the entrance gate. So were Aussie ex-footballer Harry Kewell — formerly of Leeds and Liverpool — and his soap actress wife Sheree Murphy, and Mr Selfridge actor Jeremy Piven.

In that halcyon month, celebrity publicists were advising their clients that eating at Chiltern Firehouse wasn’t a recreational decision but an existential question. If you weren’t getting snapped on Chiltern Street, you might as well not be a celebrity at all.

“Someone I know used to work as a hostess there on the front desk of the restaurant and celebs would just show up without a reservation because they’d want to get snapped outside,” says a leading diarist. “There was chaos trying to find everyone tables and give them somewhere to wait without it looking as if they were being turned away.

“Lindsay Lohan used to demand a private area in the back so that she could drink without really being spotted — that’s why she went so often. She was also living there at one point, and Rita Ora stayed there before it even opened.”

Balazs coaxed chef Nuno Mendes from Viajante in Bethnal Green and the resulting restaurant won solid but not delirious reviews. The Standard’s Fay Maschler noted “woven chair webbing on the high ceiling that absorbs noise, sleek tiles laid adjacent to frowsty patterned carpeting that you might find in a Home Counties hotel”. She found the desserts “superb” and the rest agreeable, and gave it four stars.

The socialite and stylist Roxie Nafousi — a card-carrying member of the Fire brigade, whose exes include Damien Hirst and Harry Styles — says the design of the restaurant lends it an unusual atmosphere.

“I don’t know if it’s the layout — which means everyone can see everyone, with the different layers making everyone visible — but it’s definitely got that New York vibe, where everyone is talking to everyone else. And one person at each table is linked in some way to someone else.”

She describes the Studio 54-style cast of guests. “The first time I went was after the Elle style awards in February. That first few months until June there was no place like it. Every night you went in you couldn’t believe your eyes, it was insane.

“There was a really unique atmosphere in there — it was like Hollywood had come to London. It had a really American feel, it felt like a meeting of two worlds. Nowhere else has had that many directors and actors.” Why did it take off so much, so quickly? “André is such an incredibly charismatic person and has so many friends. Everyone trusts him because of his past successes, such as Chateau Marmont. And he is always in there, on the front line, being a host,” says Nafousi.

The phenomenon of celebrities frantically lining up outside the Firehouse like animals boarding the ark has slightly abated of late but it’s still the drinking hole of choice for most people with more than 100,000 Twitter followers.

Model Daisy Lowe was in there last week, as was Muse frontman Matt Bellamy (newly separated from Kate Hudson), and Lohan. Kylie was also there, along with Lily Allen, prompting one bored diarist to christen it the “Chiltern Choirhouse”. A more cynical regular described a recent visit in which she saw another side of the hotel’s clientele. It was apparently “full of Swiss bankers who looked excited to have been allowed in, and women who’d plasticised themselves into giant sex dolls. I stood next to one in the girls’ loo who seemed unable to stop her bloated lips falling into a gaping O.”

Another quibble comes from a party girl — she does not wish to be named — who was in there this week and found herself in the inner sanctum. “My friend took over DJ-ing but they only have a record player, so he had to play The Jackson 5,” she says. “There is a very ornate, possibly gold, dog bowl in the smoking area for pooches. The food’s all right.”

The glamorous twentysomething publicist Rebecca Ridge says the big names are still choosing the Firehouse. “You can pop in for a quick drink and end up sandwiched between Gwyneth Paltrow and Harry Styles at the bar,” she says.

Although when I went in there for my only visit, our quiet drink was hijacked by an arrogant and socially awkward Nigerian oil man, who spent all evening trying to seduce Ridge and has been continuing his efforts ever since on Whatsapp. For a few minutes, Balazs was at our table, glad-handing and spreading his lucrative charm.

Balazs is now, by all accounts, a paid-up member of London’s most glamorous fast set. He spent Halloween with Kate Moss, at a party where Moss dressed up as Cara Delevingne and Balasz dressed up as Rita Ora’s boyfriend.

But will the fire soon be extinguished, like the pub fires and kitchen mis-haps of this parish that used to be smothered by the building’s previous occupants? Or perhaps it will still be going in 2074 — at which point the historians of high society will look back on the Marylebone shenanigans of Lohan, Ora, Delevingne and Clinton like some kind of long-lost golden age.

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