As you wend your way through Brighton's North Laines, full of brightly painted terraced houses, students, charity shops and vegetarian cafes, you don't expect to turn the corner and discover that your hotel is a big, white slumbering giant of a building, all modern and startlingly bright in the seaside light. A chunk of the Laines has been redeveloped recently, and it's here that you find the newest MyHotel.
Coloured sliding doors open onto a futuristic lobby - there's a big flat star in the middle of the floor that changes colour pulsingly and the reception desk is a silver space-shippy blob. The hotel bar, Merkaba, is through an archway, and was already full of well-dressed non-students clasping twiddly-looking cocktails.
Having staggered in in beach-ready rolled-up jeans, we felt a little shabby. Not to fret though: all our worries were about to be eased away. We were cheerily informed that our floor of the hotel represented the stomach, and that staying here would align our chakras. Travelling by lift, you have two colour choices: one bathes you in orange light so that you feel as though you are inside a streetlamp; the other is the same colour as those fly-zapping devices popular with butchers. Both are unflattering.
Once inside the room, we discovered more orange for our chakras. (Can budget-airline orange really be good for the soul?) The highlight was the completely transparent orange shower door. I have never understood why hoteliers insist on having loo doors that are almost non-existent - this opaque glass one was not even slightly soundproof. In the dark a short-sighted person sans contact lenses may do her best to go the loo silently, but will inevitably crash swearing into the invisible glass washbasin while tip-toeing to and from bed. Romantic. The lights included another pulsating colour-changing wall lamp that resembled a large, glowing sperm. However, there was a lovely window seat overlooking the street, where we passed a merry morning people-watching.
Chef Aldo Zilli has lent his name to the hotel's brasserie, a cool beige-and-glass restaurant which serves food that is by turns excellent and awful: mushrooms with goat's cheese were delicious but mussels in tomato broth were underseasoned; grilled sea bass was excellent, but the seafood special consisted of an inedible clump of angel-hair pasta and insipid shellfish. I'm not sure why an Italian restaurant is offering Thai fishcakes; it rather points to a surprising lack of faith in Brighton's cosmopolitan residents, given that the city teems with award-winning restaurants.
All in all, this hotel is confusing - painfully hip, luxurious and special, but also bizarre and occasionally annoying.
· 17 Jubilee Street, Brighton 01273 900 300; myhotels.com
The cost: Doubles from £179, including cocktail at Merkaba and two-course dinner at Zilli Brasserie.
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