Adagio Stratford London: Yes, Book the Cheap Studio in East Village
Yes, Adagio Stratford London is worth booking, for the value and the address, not the eco badge
I lived in the tall building across the street from Adagio for years, up in a penthouse, so I hold this neighbourhood in high regard.
So no, I am not neutral about this one. Book it. Adagio Stratford London is a four star apart hotel in East Village, the corner of Stratford the 2012 Olympics built out of nothing, and it is the cheapest studio with a kitchen of its own I have found in this part of the city. A night runs as low as sixty to seventy five pounds, under the Hilton next door.
That tall building was The Stratford, where I paid three thousand one hundred a month for a loft with a 360 view that did something unreal at sunrise and sunset, two restaurants downstairs, and West Ham players in the lift most mornings. So when I send you across the road to a studio at seventy five pounds, same neighbourhood, same park out the window, take it from someone who knows exactly what this postcode is worth.
I am back in London after losing my granny. And if I have to be in this city, it is east London, every time. Nothing else is this connected, nothing else has this much going on, and nowhere else feels the way Stratford feels to me.
This is not a flythrough off a press kit. I booked a studio, cooked in it, slept in it, ran the six pound laundry, sat down for the breakfast, and filmed the lot. Everything below is what I actually found.
Where should you stay in London near the Olympic Park?
Stratford, and East Village specifically, the part with the park folded into it.
The 2012 Summer Olympics was hosted right here, and before that there was nothing. That is the thing visitors miss about this address. Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park is the parkland the Games left behind, and Adagio sits inside it, minutes from the London Aquatics Centre and the stadium. West Ham fans, the ground is right there. Everyone else gets the runners, the cyclists, and more grass than anywhere this well connected has a right to.
Thirty seven percent of East Village is green space. You feel it on the walk to the door before you could put a number on it.
What is east London like for tourists?
Quiet, green and full of prams, not the old reputation.
East Village is a place for young professionals and young families. That is how I would describe it, and it shows: apartments, cafes, a refill store for the zero waste crowd. Westfield Stratford City sits close enough that I could see it from the studio window, holding a cinema, bowling, food, and Sadler’s Wells Theatre, where you can take a drink, co work, and not get moved on. The older Stratford Shopping Centre is a short walk past it, still loud with market vendors, there long before Westfield arrived. No aparthotel sits closer to Westfield Stratford City than this one.
What kept me here for years was the mix. East Village is properly diverse, Hackney Wick is a short ride one way, and old Stratford sits right beside the new build, so the gentrification never fully scrubbed the culture out. On a good morning I would get on the bike and loop through East Village, across the Olympic Park and over the bridge to Victoria Park, then back, barely touching a road I did not want to be on.
Whether that suits you depends on what you came for. I would not put a first time tourist who wants Big Ben out the window here. I would put the one who wants to live like a local for a week.
What is the best way to get around London without a car?
Trains, and so many that owning a car here looks like a mistake.
You would be crazy to rent a car with all of these options. Stratford Station, Stratford International, the DLR, buses, a coach station that runs to the airports, and the Underground on the Central, Jubilee, Elizabeth and Overground lines, all of it on Transport for London. Coming from Heathrow, the Elizabeth line runs straight across to Stratford with no changes, which is about the gentlest airport arrival London gives you.
You do not need a car whatsoever. That fact carries most of the sustainable mobility the brochure takes credit for, because the trains are what keep the cars off the road, not the towel cards.
What is the difference between an aparthotel and a hotel?
The kitchen. An aparthotel hands you a hob and a hotel does not.
I chose an aparthotel over a hotel for one reason and it was the kitchen.
The kitchenette is the whole reason I was drawn to this space in the first place, because I can source my own food locally and cook up local produce. A hotel decides what you eat. An aparthotel hands you a hob and leaves you to it. Adagio fits a small, fully kitted kitchen into each of its 136 studio apartments, hob and fridge and dishwasher and recycling split three ways.
So I shopped the way I do at home. British organic produce, in season, carrots and turnips and garlic and leek and kale, my own organic lentils, pink Himalayan salt, a habanero. Cooked my own dinner in it. I am plant based and I cook for myself wherever I land, for the quality and because food transparency is the whole of my work. For any stay longer than a night, that is the argument for cook for yourself, self catering accommodation in a city that charges you for breathing.
Is Adagio London Stratford worth it?
For the money, yes, and I will not skip the caveats.
The studio had high ceilings and a thermostat I could actually work, and the soundproofing caught me out on a road this loud. I could not hear a thing, with the red buses and the black taxis sliding past the near floor to ceiling window like a silent film of London.
What I would tell a friend before they book:
- Twin beds, clean. Ask for a double if you like to splay out. I scanned for bedbugs out of habit and found none.
- The desk takes a laptop and little else. No second monitor.
- There is a Nespresso machine, which is a shame. Nestlé is a horrible company we avoid at all costs, even when it is free.
- The soap and body wash are not non toxic. Pack your own.
- The gym is small, clean and modern, open twenty four seven.
- Laundry is six pounds in coins, coins only, which is steep. Drying is free, which reads like an apology. Take cards.
- Parking is around sixteen pounds a night. I would not.
Breakfast is where it slipped. I went down for the coffee and peeped at the spread Adagio bills as local products. It did not look good. Standard continental misery. What is on that table is what every hotel runs, so after the coffee I went back up and ate what I had cooked.
Rates move, so get a current quote, but you can check prices and book Adagio Stratford London through Expedia here. Sixty pounds for a studio with a kitchen does most of the convincing on its own.
Is Adagio Stratford London actually an eco hotel?
No, not exceptionally. It does the basics and stops there.
I do not think Adagio are doing anything exceptional at all. This is the bare minimum that everybody should be doing, so I would not classify it as an eco hotel.
I want to be fair to it though. Adagio Stratford London holds Green Key certification, which is what lands it on most lists of sustainable London hotels, and it does the basics properly. No single use plastics in the studio, and I looked. Water saving fixtures on the taps and shower. Energy efficient appliances, smart climate control, common areas kept to government temperature guidance, and rooftop planting and green space built into East Village around it.
None of that moves me, and I have thought about why. It is the floor. A group this size, Accor and the Pierre & Vacances Center Parcs Group, could drag the rest of the industry up with it and has decided the minimum will do. So I would not book Adagio for the eco badge. I would book it because the studio is cheap and clean, the trains sit under your feet, the neighbourhood runs a third green, and the kitchen lets you eat the way you want to. Different reason, truer one. It still belongs among the more honest sustainable stays across Europe in our directory, and the verified facts and booking details live on our Adagio Stratford London listing.
My pick, plainly: the cheap studio, the kitchen, the trains, the green. I would stay again, and I no longer have a window across the street to do it from. See you in East Village.