Vive la Difference!
I defy any proprietor, restaurant manager or general manager in an establishment such as our own to say that he is completely indifferent to the dress that his guests choose to wear.
We are often asked “what is the dress code” and over the 38 years I have owned Hambleton Hall I have tried to train my staff to give a complicated answer to this question.
The easy answer is “jacket and tie, no jeans no trainers” but I have always tried to avoid this approach. Our official answer is “We are a smart restaurant and we suggest that you will feel more comfortable if smartly dressed”, but of course this does make matters more complicated. Intentionally so. We do not want to tell you what to wear but we would like you to know that if you are one of those men (and they are almost always men) who makes not the slightest effort, and arrive with us dressed for the scruffier kind of pub, we feel a bit sad.
Our female clients generally understand that for the full enjoyment of a fine restaurant and a stay in a luxurious hotel, a change of mood is needed between the day job and Hambleton. The time honoured procedure of achieving the mood change is to have a bath and change clothes.
What makes any dress code ridiculous is that what you choose to wear after the bath will depend on your age and taste. Personally I belong to a jacket and (usually) tie generation and have a huge investment with the tailor and Hermes to prove it, but none of us is the least taken aback when a guest such as Norbert pictured above adopts his equally smart but less formal
approach.
Competition Time!
For the months of October and November we are running a “Best Dressed Client” competition. To enter you just have to submit to having your picture taken and agree to letting us
use it (anonymously if desired ) on social media. A panel consisting of Mrs Hart and me, plus selected fashionables of differing age groups will judge the photos received and give dinner for two and a bottle of house champagne to the winner each month.
This is not about formality, its about the joy of getting dressed!