Cheers to the Soho drinking lair
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
It’s 3.30pm on a Tuesday afternoon and The Devonshire pub in Soho is a riot – every nook and cranny is packed with cheery people sipping Guinness and drinking wine. Upstairs in the first-floor restaurant, late-lunchers are feasting on steak, chips and claret, warmed by a roaring wood-fired grill. If you want to eat here then expect to eat late – because getting a table’s a nightmare. Virtually every service has been fully booked since The Devonshire opened in November.
It’s a fine pub, to be sure, all handsome wood panelling and blood-red leather banquettes. But its real draw is the “supergroup” behind it: restaurateur Charlie Carroll (founder of Flat Iron), chef Ashley Palmer-Watts (ex-Fat Duck) and Oisín Rogers, the genial former GM of Mayfair institution The Guinea Grill.
The trio resurrected the pub – which dates from 1793 – from the ashes of a Jamie’s Italian, and its success has been hailed by some as the harbinger of a new golden age for Soho independents. “Soho has always been an exciting place to go out in,” says Rogers, “and there are lots of great old places like The French House, Bar Italia, The Coach & Horses and Andrew Edmunds that haven’t changed. But it’s also always evolving and that’s part of the moving colour of the place. It’s louche, vibrant, high-paced.”
Rogers lives next door to what was once the epicentre of Soho loucheness, the Groucho Club on Dean Street; a spot that he feels is now “having a bit of a renaissance”. And there’s more than a whiff of Groucho clubbiness in The Devonshire’s VIP Green Room, a private bit out the back that can only be accessed through a rather performative door in the bar. This is where you’ll find Lewis Capaldi and Joe Jonas having a late-night sing-song round the piano, and walls hung with Gilbert & George works loaned by the pub’s high-net-worth regulars. I see a well-known actor having a pint, and the former England footballer Peter Crouch pops by to say hello. When we meet, Rogers is just back from Davos (“Oh, I just go for the skiing – I sleep on an old friend’s floor!”). He’s clearly a savvy networker as well as a good landlord.
Soho has also lately seen an influx of A-listers from the cocktail world. Max and Noel Venning are the brothers behind the acclaimed Three Sheets, a bar that defined east London’s cocktail scene (Max was also co-founder of the gonzo wine bar Top Cuvée). This month, the pair marked their West End debut with Three Sheets mark two on Manette Street, a newly designed enclave in Soho that runs between Greek Street and Charing Cross Road. “Nowhere else comes close to the energy and vibe of Soho,” says Max. “But we were particularly drawn to this location as it has something of the European square about it – it’s a little pocket of peacefulness.”
The new Three Sheets will have all the streamlined style of the original – olive-green banquettes, linen-textured walls, uncluttered white marble bar – but it will take it up a gear, opening for breakfast, lunch, coffee and doing French wines and interesting champagnes by the glass. Expect Three Sheets’ bestselling twist on a Dirty Martini, and its signature French 75, a sparkling blend of Moscato, gin, lemon, verjus and orange flower water. Snacks by William Blank (ex-Lyle’s) will include oysters, salt beef sandwiches and burnt butter affogato. There will also be a 20-seat terrace that I’m sure will be packed, come summer.
On the same street is Wacky Wombat, the eccentric new venture from Nic de Soto, the globetrotting “star-tender” behind the Danico bar in Paris and Mace bar in NYC. I’m not sure if I love or hate Wacky Wombat, but it is certainly unique (and despite the name there is very little that is antipodean about it). You approach down a long, dark corridor with a wet-look black ceiling and menacing muzak, before popping out in a circular bar that feels like a cross between an underground nightclub lounge and an escape pod in Star Trek. There are vines scrambling up a central pillar and a blue-lit drinks “lab” visible out the back. The elaborate cocktails crunch unlikely flavours – white chocolate, tomato, fermented raspberry and wasabi – in a single glass, and there’s an eye-popping WC.
Just over Charing Cross Road, on Denmark Street, is the brilliant new whisky bar Dram, a tiny brutalist bar where you can sip world-class malts bathed in a wash of soft pink lighting. If you don’t worship at the altar of whisky there are also crushable cocktails on tap, plus a pool table, an interior courtyard and another bar downstairs.
Lastly, just a stone’s throw from Old Compton Street, Atelier Coupette is a new off-shoot of the award-winning Francophile cocktail bar Coupette. “It’s really encouraging to see lots of new places opening up,” says Bobby Hiddleston, co-owner of the great cocktail bar Swift, which has been on Old Compton Street since 2016, “it feels like the Soho of old.” 2024 is shaping up to be one helluva bar crawl.
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