Parador 44

Parador 44 opened on 27 June 2022 at 14-15 Quay Street, in central Cardiff. It has nine rooms, each designed individually, in a former office building that Grupo 44 converted. The name borrows from Spain's state-run paradores, and the hotel sits above the group's own restaurant. The launch rates, Spanish breakfast included, were from £195 for a small room and from £290 for a junior suite.

The place

The hotel stands opposite the Principality Stadium on Quay Street, about 500 metres from Central Square, where the main railway station is, and from Cardiff Castle. The conversion was planned so that the rooms and the terrace sit away from the busy streets around.

Bar 44, the group's tapas bar, is nearby and opens every night of the week.

The concept

Grupo 44 is a family business from South Wales. Tom Morgan, Owen Morgan and their sister Natalie Isaac opened their first tapas bar, Bar 44, in the Vale of Glamorgan about twenty years before the hotel, then added sites in Penarth, Cardiff and Bristol. They also run Asador 44, a northern Spanish grill and wine house, and Mercado 44, an online Spanish food shop. Owen Morgan is a certified sherry educator, which explains the theme.

The building was empty office space. Conversion cost £1.178 million, of which £770,000 came from the Welsh Government's Transforming Towns loan scheme, with Cardiff Council also involved in the funding.

The designers reused material wherever they could. Reclaimed historic floorboards went into beams, window sills, headboards and shelving, and old Spanish doors and shutters became headboards. Each room is named after a style of sherry, with the name and an illustration etched in Welsh slate beside the door.

There are nine en suite rooms in all, including light-filled suites. Downstairs, a residents' lounge runs an honesty bar of Spanish drinks and snacks, and the family pours its own Manzanilla and a Galician white blended from five native grape varieties. Outside is an Andalucian-style terrace.

Dining & wellness

Asador 44, the grill and wine house below the hotel, serves as its restaurant. A Spanish breakfast is served to every guest each morning. The menu at the opening included beef tartare from ex-dairy cattle, celeriac roasted over coals with a sherry sauce, and a chocolate and hazelnut tart with beef-fat caramel. Sherry also turns up in desserts and in the Welsh cakes served at breakfast.