Where to

Mumbai · Nariman Point

The Oberoi, Mumbai

At the end of Marine Drive, where the promenade runs out. Every window in the building is the whole wall.

The two towers at the end of Marine Drive at sunset, lit warm against a rose and violet sky, with the seawall promenade running away from them and the lights of the Queen's Necklace already on along the whole curve of the bay.

You come down Marine Drive with the sea on your right and the whole crescent of the bay ahead, and at the far end, where the promenade runs out at Nariman Point, the building is waiting: two towers over the seawall, the near one ribbed limestone, the older one behind it in concrete, lit warm from below by the time you get there. The porte-cochère is under a low concrete lip and takes about 4 seconds. Then the doors, and the noise stops. What you walk into is an atrium 7 storeys deep — open galleries stepping up on every side, a floor of white marble you can see your own reflection in, a wall of glass at the far end holding the sea, and a red lacquer grand piano standing alone in the middle of it with nobody at it. To one side there is a bronze of two dancers, and a copper vessel of red ginger flowers on a block of black granite with water falling silently down every face of it. Nobody rushes you. Somebody has already taken the bags.

A copper vessel of red ginger flowers on a black granite plinth, water sheeting silently down all four faces of it into a lit pool below.

Every room here is about what is outside the glass, and 6 o'clock is the hour to test it. The windows run wall to wall and floor to ceiling, and there is no balcony anywhere in the building: the glass is the whole wall, so the room does not look at the view, it sits inside it. On the sea side the water goes from blue to pewter to gold in about 20 minutes, and the light comes across the parquet in one long bar. On the bay side Marine Drive begins to switch on, one sodium lamp at a time from the Chowpatty end, until the whole 3-kilometre curve is a single strand of light on black water. That is the Queen's Necklace, and it does not exist by day. Behind you the room is quiet about itself: pale ribbed headboard, an embroidered runner across white linen, a writing desk with a cordless telephone on it, a walk-in wardrobe, a bathroom with a standalone tub. The air is filtered, which in this city you notice by the second morning.

The staff here come up through the Oberoi Centre of Learning and Development, and what that produces is not warmth exactly but a kind of anticipatory precision — unnerving the first time, addictive by the second night. Butlers come with the suites, around the clock, and female butlers look after women travelling alone. They are quiet to the point of self-effacement, and after two days you notice that nothing has gone wrong.

The house

The atrium seen from the mezzanine: tiered galleries stepping up seven floors over a floor of white marble, a wall of glass onto Marine Drive at the far end, and the red grand piano standing alone in the middle of it.

The hotel from the street after dark, its ribbed limestone corner floodlit yellow against a deep blue sky, the porte-cochère lit at the foot of it and the older concrete tower standing behind.

A bronze of two dancers with their arms flung wide, on a low plinth in the middle of the marble floor, with the lobby's lamps and the red piano a long way behind them.

A sitting alcove off the lobby — three tall panels of stencilled black creeper on white, a pale gold sofa with two scarlet bolsters, a carved wooden finial standing either side and a bowl of pink flowers on the table.

A table laid for two in the corner glass, gold-rimmed plates and a low vase between them, with the seawall, the water and the whole grey line of the city on the far side of the bay through the window.

Drink and Dine

3 restaurants and 2 bars

Vineet Bhatia's Indian, and the sea in the whole wall
Ziya
When
Lunch 12.30pm to 3pm; dinner at 7pm and again at 9.30pm
Dress
Long trousers and closed shoes for men
Tables
By reservation
Modern Indian, with menus by Vineet Bhatia, who holds a Michelin star and an MBE. Classic dishes are taken apart and rebuilt, and the way to eat here is the gourmand menu — a walk down the subcontinent, with a wine poured against each course. The room is laid in white and gold against a wall of glass, so lunch is the Arabian Sea and dinner is the lights on the water. Two dinner seatings, at 7 and at 9.30.
Full entry →
Open at 6.30 in the morning, shut at 11.30 at night
Fenix
When
6.30am to 11.30pm
Tables
Worth booking
The all-day room, and it flows out of the atrium so there is no door and no threshold — you simply find you are in it. A wall of lit open shelving stacked with books and objects, oxblood leather chairs at bare dark tables, and enough daylight coming down the atrium that it never feels like a hotel restaurant. The kitchen runs Europe and Japan and Indian classics off one pass, with a robatayaki grill and a sushi counter worked in front of you. Breakfast, the Sunday brunch and a working lunch all happen here, and the room does not change character for any of them.
Full entry →
Deep red, gold overhead, open until 1.30 in the morning
The Eau Bar
When
5pm to 1.30am; DJ on Saturday and Sunday
Tables
Worth booking
Art deco taken seriously: red velvet, walls pleated floor to ceiling, and a ceiling strung with fine gold filaments that read as a tree of life seen from underneath. The cocktail list was built with Andrew Pearson and the back bar is deep in single malts. There is a private lounge for a smaller evening, and a terrace outside it with the sea in front of you and the city lit along the edge. A DJ on Saturday and Sunday.
Full entry →
Just off the lobby, with the piano going
The Champagne Lounge
When
8am to 11.30pm, every day
Tables
Walk in
A few steps from the red piano, beside floor-to-ceiling glass: champagne, single-origin coffee ground to order, loose-leaf tea, sandwiches and scones with jam and cream, and somebody playing while the sun goes down over the water. It runs from 8 in the morning until 11.30 at night, so it is breakfast, it is the meeting you did not want to hold in a meeting room, and it is the hour before dinner.
Full entry →
A counter, not a table
The Oberoi Patisserie
When
10am to 8pm
Tables
Walk in
Cakes, breads, brioche and pastry baked through the day and put out as they come, under a wall of flat orange that you can see from the lobby. Alongside them: imported cheese and charcuterie, house-made pasta, condiments, and wine from Australia, California, Chile, Italy and France. It is a shop rather than a restaurant and there is nowhere to sit. You buy something on the way out and eat it on the promenade. They will wrap it if it is for somebody else.
Full entry →

What is here

The Red Piano
It stands alone in the middle of 7 storeys of atrium, lid up, stool pushed in, red lacquer on white marble with nothing else on it for 20 feet in any direction. Somebody plays it in the late afternoon and again in the evening, and the sound goes all the way up. The Champagne Lounge sits just off it, behind its own floor-to-ceiling glass onto Marine Drive, so the best seat in the house for the hour before dinner costs the price of a pot of tea.
The Pool
The pool is 18 metres of temperature-controlled water in a courtyard the building wraps around. A black granite wall runs down one side with water falling the whole face of it, so what you hear in there is water rather than Nariman Point. Yellow loungers, closed parasols, coconut palms at the far end, and the sea flat and pale beyond them. It opens at sunrise and closes at sunset, which in a Bombay May makes the first hour the only sane one. In the evening the kitchen will lay a table at the edge of it and light candles.
The Residents' Lounge
The two Residential Suites are apartments rather than rooms — kitchen, dining room, study, dressing area — and the residence floors have habits of their own: a private parking space, a valet, a concierge and a butler around the clock, and this lounge, a room with an orange wall, 4 low chairs round a lamp and a long table with the papers on it. Everything else in the hotel is open to you as well.

Mumbai at Dawn. The concierge's dawn run, and it starts at first light. A car takes you to the flower market while it is still being unloaded — the day's flowers for the whole city, most of them delivered by 9 — then to Victoria Terminus, where the milk and newspaper vendors shout at each other under the Gothic arches, then to the docks for the fish auction. It finishes with chai and something fried. You are back before the hotel has finished laying breakfast, and you have seen the city work.

Kala Ghoda, on Foot and by Car. Two ways to take the same square mile. The heritage walk is 2 hours. It starts at the Prince of Wales Museum and goes past the Jehangir Art Gallery, Rajabai Tower, the High Court and the University to Victoria Terminus, with a guide who knows which stories are true. Art Kaleidoscope is the gallery version, and it is driven — Jehangir, the National Gallery of Modern Art, Sakshi, Chatterjee and Lal, Project 88. The galleries shut on Sunday, so plan it for a weekday. Both leave from the museum steps, and a car takes you there.

Good to know

The Oberoi Spa and the fitness centre are closed while they are rebuilt. A shorter list of treatments runs from a private spa suite for resident guests, on 24 hours' notice, and the gym and steam room at the adjoining Trident are open to you at pool level.
A child of 13 or over needs a room of their own.

The rooms

Bay, ocean, or Queen's Necklace: pick the water

The hotel sits on the corner where Back Bay meets the open sea, and each of the 3 views is its own grade. Bay is the harbour side: working water, the curve of the seawall, and after dark the 3-kilometre chain of sodium lamps down Marine Drive that the city calls the Queen's Necklace. Ocean is the other face: the open Arabian Sea, the far headland, and an empty horizon. Queen's Necklace catches both, and costs the most.

The necklace is a night view — by day it is a road. Take the bay if you are here for meetings and will be in the room by 7 in the evening. Take the ocean if you are here to sleep and read; it is better at 6 in the morning than anything else in the building.

All the same size, except one

Luxury Room, Premier Room, Bay View Rooms and Premier Ocean View Rooms are 37 square metres each — same footprint, same king or twin bed, same walk-in wardrobe, same standalone tub. What changes is the aspect: city, city, bay, sea.

Luxury Bay View Rooms is the exception at 41 square metres, the largest room in the hotel, and its bay view is only partial. The biggest room and the best view are not the same room.

Room to suite: where it's worth the step

Bay View Suite is the first step up, at 73 square metres — nearly double the room grades below it. It adds a separate living room, a glass-walled bathroom, and a door between the bed and everything else. Suites come with a butler around the clock; rooms do not.

Above it, size stops climbing: Premier Bay View Suite is 81 square metres, and is 73, the same as the . The step from there is the view, not the space.

The same seawall at blue hour, the water gone slate, the promenade lamps lit and the hotel standing at the end of the curve.

The bar's outdoor deck late in the afternoon: wicker tub chairs and round marble tables along a black granite channel, a living wall of green behind them and the coconut palms of the compound going off to the left.

They are quiet to the point of self-effacement, and after two days you notice that nothing has gone wrong.

The particulars

Arrive: From 2 PM
Depart: By noon

Where it is

The Oberoi
Nariman Point
Mumbai, Maharashtra 400021
India

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The small print

A child is 11 or under.

Extra breakfast

Up to 6: Free
7 to 11: On request

A child of 7 to 11 is charged half the adult meal plan.

Extra bed

Up to 11: Free

Up to 2 children share their parents' room. Not every grade takes an extra bed, so ask when you book.

Where it is, and how long the drive takes: Nariman Point, at the southern end of Marine Drive, 400021 by post. Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport is 25 kilometres away and about an hour; at 8 in the morning it is longer. The Gateway of India is 2 kilometres from the door and Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus 2.5, or 15 minutes by car, and both are walkable when the weather allows. The concierge arranges airport transfers, and they are charged.

Room	Size	Sleeps	View	Layout	Bed
Luxury Room	37 m²	2 + 2 children	The city	One room	King or twin
Premier Room	37 m²	2 + 2 children	The city	One room	King or twin
Bay View Rooms	37 m²	2 + 2 children	Back Bay	One room	King
Luxury Bay View Rooms	41 m²	2 + 2 children	Part of Back Bay	One room	King
Premier Ocean View Rooms	37 m²	2 + 2 children	The Arabian Sea	One room	King or twin
Bay View Suite	73 m²	2 + 2 children	Back Bay	Bedroom and living room	King
Ocean View Suite	73 m²	2 + 2 children	The Arabian Sea	Bedroom and living room	King
Deluxe Ocean View Suite	69 m²	2 + 2 children	The Arabian Sea	Bedroom and living room	Oversized king
Premier Suite Queen's Necklace View	81 m²	2 + 2 children	Ocean and Queen's Necklace	Bedroom, living and dining room	King
Premier Ocean View Suite	73 m²	2 + 2 children	The Arabian Sea	Bedroom and living room	King
Premier Bay View Suite	81 m²	2 + 2 children	Back Bay	Bedroom and living room	Oversized king
Golconda Suite	191 m²	2 + 2 children	Ocean and Queen's Necklace	Bedroom, living room and dining room	King
Kohinoor Suite	191 m²	2 + 2 children	Ocean and Queen's Necklace	Bedroom and living-dining room	King
Luxury Residential Suite	90 m²	2 + 2 children	The city	Bedroom, living room, dining room and kitchen	Emperor
Bay View Residential Suite	113 m²	2 + 2 children	Back Bay	Bedroom, living room, dining room and kitchen	Emperor

The Oberoi, Mumbai

The house

Drink and Dine

Ziya

Fenix

The Eau Bar

The Champagne Lounge

The Oberoi Patisserie

What is here

The Red Piano

The Pool

The Residents' Lounge

Good to know

The rooms

The particulars

Where it is

The small print

Extra breakfast

Extra bed

Side by side

The rooms themselves

Luxury Room

Premier Room

Bay View Rooms

Luxury Bay View Rooms

Premier Ocean View Rooms

Bay View Suite

Ocean View Suite

Deluxe Ocean View Suite

Premier Suite Queen's Necklace View

Premier Ocean View Suite

Premier Bay View Suite

Golconda Suite

Kohinoor Suite

Luxury Residential Suite

Bay View Residential Suite

The Oberoi, Mumbai