The Corner Courtyard

Hotel review

Situated on busy Sarat Bose Rd, you might expect this chic hotel to be noisy; but inside, it’s a stylish haven. Everything about its interiors is designed to conjure up the vibrancy of Kolkata. The seven rooms are named after colours: for example, Crimson reflects the red brick of the Writer’s Building and Dalhousie Square, and Viridian mirrors the city’s botanical gardens and the Royal Calcutta Golf Course. A sense of British colonial grandeur is evident in the four-poster beds, ornate doorknobs and padlocks, and the various hues filter through every aspect of the rooms – Indigo has deep-purple side-tables, blinds, rugs and paintings lining the walls. The hotel is best known for its restaurant, which serves scrummy mocktails (no alcohol) and well-presented Western dishes, such as mini-gruyere tartlets and baked bhetki fillet in a mustard-and-lemon sauce. Its chessboard floor, bling chandeliers and ruby-red walls decorated with photographs of Kolkata, vintage clocks, keys, nuts and bolts and doorknobs create a fun, eccentric atmosphere. There’s even a ‘late-nighter’s menu’ in case you get peckish, offering nibbles such as a ‘nut case’, an assortment of walnuts, almonds and cashews.

Laura Griffith-Jones