“Fellatio, dear?”
“Not today, thanks.”
Such was my morning exchange with a woman named Monica, whom I passed by on my way to work in London’s Soho neighborhood. For much of the late 90s, she stood in her doorway on Berwick Street, a fixture to the market traders and media types who worked in the surrounding area.
When I moved my office to Soho after previously occupying the attic of a Savile Row tailor’s studio, I discovered that Regent Street was much more than a geographical boundary between the two neighborhoods.
“Regent Street might as well be the Grand Canyon, such is the divide between posh Mayfair and naughty Soho,” says Jeremy Lee, who is known as the “chef proprietor” of Quo Vadis, the Dean Street restaurant and members’ club that has been holding court over the neighborhood since 1926.
In the past few decades, little has changed. One of the reasons this square mile of London hasn’t been Disneyfied like its other neighbor, Covent Garden, is the simple fact that most of the buildings are listed as protected historic sites, and the international luxury brands and corporations can’t physically squeeze into the narrow town houses. Instead, it’s housed some of London’s classic institutions, such as the satire-and-current-affairs magazine Private Eye, which has been headquartered on Carlisle Street for more than 50 years, and the pub the Coach and Horses, where the magazine’s staff is known to lunch.
But over the past few months, a number of exciting new restaurants and hotels have opened, convincing Londoners to take another look at the neighborhood they thought they knew. First up is the Broadwick Soho, a gloriously flamboyant 57-room hotel that opened in November on the corner of Broadwick and Berwick Streets. Jamie Poulton, one of the hotel’s founders, grew up in Soho, where his father, Alan Poulton, ran a string of sex shops in the 80s and 90s. (Alan inspired the character of “Hatchet” Harry Lonsdale in Guy Ritchie’s 1998 film, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels.)
As a teenager, Jamie worked an after-school job at the Astral, an adult cinema with two theaters—one for gay films and the other for straight. “It was almost impossible for anyone wanting to open a business in Soho to get a bank loan,” he recalls, “which made it a cheap place to live and work and to behave how one wished. Soho has always had a level of tolerance that nowhere else in London would allow.”
The Broadwick’s creative director, Andrea Gelardin, spent months combing through the archive of the British Film Institute, researching footage of the local theaters and sex shops from the 40s, 50s, and 60s to get the hotel’s ambience just right. Designer Martin Brudnizki, known for his work at the Wolseley and Annabel’s, is responsible for the seductive interiors that celebrate Soho past and present. Flute, its rooftop bar, with a mirrored ceiling and wraparound views of the London skyline, was named after the flute workshop that existed on the same street in the 19th century.
The stylish photographer Nikolai von Bismarck, who dates Kate Moss and frequently works for brands such as Dior and Fendi, has his studio on Manette Street, in a building owned by billionaire Richard Desmond. He made his fortune, in part, through the adult-entertainment network Portland TV and by publishing magazines such as Penthouse and Barely Legal.
People have been ranting over the death of old Soho for the past 40 years, and they will continue to grumble. Diana Melly, my 86-year-old neighbor and friend, reminisced about her time as a hostess at Murray’s Cabaret Club on Beak Street in 1953. Wearing nothing more than a pair of wings and a silver G-string, she and her fellow dancers would change in a small room above an Italian restaurant across the road (which also happened to host weekly meetings of the Surrealists, including her future husband, the jazz musician George Melly.)
Murray’s former home is now home to Mountain, one of London’s coolest restaurants. When it opened its doors last August, it became an overnight sensation. Chef and owner Tomos Parry, known for Brat, in Shoreditch, oversees the Basque-meets-Welsh cooking in its industrial dining room. Packed with film and fashion people lunching on grilled peas and cockle soup, Mountain has become a treasured haunt for chefs and restaurant critics—for those who can snag a table, that is. (Several communal tables are available for walk-ins.)
The downstairs bar is infused with the spirit of former Murray’s hostesses Christine Keeler and Mandy Rice-Davies, who would have shimmied through this very same space in the 60s, sharing glasses of vintage champagne with heads of state, film stars, and soon-to-be-disgraced politicians.
A short walk away, in a new location on Hedden Street, the Colony Room Club (which closed in the late 90s) was revived in November. Opened in 1948 by Muriel Belcher, it was the notoriously seedy drinking den of Jeffrey Bernard, George Melly, and Francis Bacon. (In later years, Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin were regulars.) It’s been faithfully replicated, and best of all, the drink prices haven’t changed. Some of the old regulars are dismissive, lamenting the lack of foul smell, the grubby staircase, the smoke-filled bar, and the spirit of The Spectator columnist Jeffrey Bernard. (Memorably, he told one of the Kray twins, who ran London’s organized-crime scene in the 50s, to “stop being such a fucking bore.”)
Don’t despair: Soho’s current renaissance doesn’t mean the end of its old drinking dens and members’ clubs. After a long and angsty wait, Tricia’s on Greek Street clung on to its liquor license and reopened, much to the delight of regulars, who recently tumbled down the stairs to celebrate over endless glasses of the Danni Special, a triple whiskey with a splash of Coca-Cola.
Around the corner, and next to Alex Eagle’s fashion boutique—her husband, Mark Wadhwa, owns the parking lot on Brewer Street—is the Academy. Tucked away behind an unmarked door up a rickety staircase, it announces itself quietly. The same cannot be said of its shouty neighbor, the Groucho Club (now part of the Hauser & Wirth empire). Art dealer and restaurateur Andrew Edmunds (along with his friend Auberon Waugh) founded this literary luncheon club in the 80s above his restaurant and print shop. Its house rules included a blanket ban on “poets and bores,” and to this day anyone seen using a mobile phone must buy champagne for everyone in the club.
Discussing this wave of new arrivals over a Fernet-Branca in the buzzing upstairs members’ club at Quo Vadis, Lee relishes the feeling of community propelling Soho into its new era. “There’s not really a duff note,” he says. “Look at Kiln, Duck Soup, and Noble Rot, who, post–opening hype, have all comfortably settled into a groove. Not only have they given the Soho restaurant scene a massive boost, but more importantly, lured back the cool hipsters who, a decade ago, were busy opening bars in East London.”
Case in point: the Venning brothers of Dalston, whose bar, Three Sheets, is among the most popular in East London. In March, they will open a sister location on Manette Street. “Having always loved Soho, I missed being there,” says Max Venning, who describes Three Sheets as “somewhere you can slip in late morning for a sneaky glass of wine and end up spending the rest of the day.” If that’s not Soho, then what is?
The late-night scene is just as compelling. Underbelly, the production company, has created a permanent venue in the Boulevard Theatre for its smash hit, Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club. “The energy around Soho is infectious,” says founder Ed Bartlam. “We’re all about producing challenging, cool, and sometimes provocative shows. [Soho] feels like the perfect fit.”
So in the spirit of Henry VIII, who would cry, “Soho, Soho!” while galloping after his hounds across the Royal Park where Soho now sits, let’s raise a glass to another 400 years of this wicked, wonderful village. Whether it’s over a pint of Guinness and Scotch egg at the Devonshire Arms or a Bad Kitty at Café Kitty, there’s no bad choice. Except, perhaps, staying close to home in Notting Hill or Islington.
Emily FitzRoy, the founder of Bellini Travel, lives in West London but is frequently found at Quo Vadis