Life at the world's coolest bar

By MATTHEW BEARD.

A basement bar in a converted townhouse which has become a magnet for footballers and daytime television presenters has been voted one of the world's coolest hangouts.

Although it may not boast the A-list clientele of its namesake in the film Casablanca, Rick's Bar in Edinburgh ranks in ambience alongside a Botswanan safari lodge, a Mauritian beach hotel and a Mexican hacienda, says the travel bible Conde Nast Traveller.

The magazine's critics said Rick's Bar, which opened last August and comprises a restaurant and a Georgian annexe with 10 bedrooms, possesses a "singular sense of style and place."

The new addition to Edinburgh's city centre offers the pleasures of a European/Pacific Rim menu, "Conranesque" rooms with floor to ceiling windows and - for the privileged - a few hours in the minimalist bar swapping tales with regulars such as footballers from Hibernian, the Edinburgh professional soccer club, and John Leslie, the television presenter and celebrity fan of the team.

Among the other British establishments included in Conde Nast's top 25 new hotels is a $150 a night hotel next to Cardiff railway station without room service or a restaurant. The Big Sleep Hotel, which was opened last April by the actor John Malkovich, a shareholder and friend of the owner, was described as "a godsend for business people fed up with paying through the nose for rooms where the smell of smoke clings to the chintz."

Among the stiff competition for innovation in London, the judges chose the Charlotte Street Hotel, a converted dental warehouse which emphasises "old-fashioned comfort and English style without overloading on the chintz."

Conde Nast critics paid a posthumous compliment to the tastes of British businessman Sir James Goldsmith whose former home, a 19th-century villa in the Mexican resort of Maha, has been converted to 26 luxury suites with views of an active volcano. The Mahakua-Hacienda de San Antonio is recommended with the warning that peak-period bookings "may require taking out a second mortgage."

- INDEPENDENT