In keeping with the inner city`s glamorous gentrification, the Metropole Hotel has been reinvented, Extreme Makeover-style. The once shabby inner city bar has become the most urbane of urban boutique hotels, incorporating the fabulously chichi and fiercely red M Bar and a crisply white and cosmopolitan restaurant, Veranda.

Aesthetic appeal was clearly high on the agenda, considering the Metropole is part of the international Design Hotels group. The cage door of the gorgeous old-fashioned lift slides open to reveal Veranda`s cool, contemporary space, characterised by dark wood tables, white linen and glass. The austerity of the interior is lightened by playful details: tea candles set atop a glass tube of marbles, the designer lampshades curled and folded in on themselves like origami, and exotic local flora artfully arranged.

The restaurant is named for the enclosed veranda that offers wraparound views of Long Street, particularly beautiful with the lights blurred and a-glitter through sheets of rain on a quiet Sunday night. Of course, a view overlooking Long Street at night offers other entertainments too. To add to the film noir atmosphere of empty streets and the soft drizzle of rain, the city police in neon vests pounced on a car guard and marched him away to a waiting van, fortunately without any violence. Unanticipated and unpleasant sideshows aside (admittedly not out of the ordinary on Long Street late at night as any club-goer knows), the urban landscape is striking and allows for a very different experience of the city.