Then there is the art, which is impressive and has been hung thoughtfully. Once anything falls on it, it is unlikely to survive in one piece. The floor is almost as eye-catching: a palladiana mosaic called Broken Floor by artist Rashid Johnson, which is unlike any other floor covering I have ever seen in a working restaurant for pretty obvious reasons. There is a series of windows which reveal a glamorous view down South Audley Street and across Mount Street with one corner table for four particularly appealing as it’s in a sort of windowed turret. The view as you walk in is most impressive. The staircase leads into a narrow vestibule, home to a smartly dressed waiting committee, which then opens up into the restaurant. The small, separate, decidedly discreet entrance to the restaurant, on Mount Street, immediately leads to a 30-step steep climb (and it is down a further 20 steps to the lavatories although there is a lift), although the narrow staircase’s walls are at least enlivened by closely packed works of art. The food menu is interesting but an open sandwich of bone marrow and a bowl of London Particular soup were let down by neither being served quite hot enough. I can heartily recommend the Wandle bitter from Sambrook’s brewery in Wandsworth as well as the Italian Menabrea lager. The ground-floor renovation has been sensitively done, keeping such small pieces of the former interior as the box where the bells rang indicating which room needed a member of staff, but improving the food substantially as well as widening the drinks offer. By and large they have met the challenge, even if there is still too much of a sense of formality about the first-floor restaurant. So if a restaurateur’s main challenge is to match the outside of the front door with what is on the inside, then Artfarm faced a major challenge. The Connaught Hotel is just at the end of the street. They are surrounded by outposts of the Richard Caring empire: Scott’s is a neighbour, the still-boarded-up George is opposite, and Harry’s Bar is 150 metres away. The pub and restaurant are located on the corner of what must be London’s most expensive street. In this process they have also managed to lure CEO Ewan Venters away from Fortnum & Mason. When they opened a gallery close to Bruton in Somerset they also opened a restaurant, Roth, where we ate well in 2019, and this association has obviously whetted their appetites because they have also since opened restaurants in Scotland and Los Angeles. Today they represent over 90 artists in galleries around the world. Toklas has now been joined by the first London opening from Artfarm as the reopened Audley Public House with Mount Street Restaurant on its first floor and a couple of private dining rooms on the floors above.Īrtfarm is the name of the company founded by Iwan and Manuela Wirth, who originally opened the first Hauser & Wirth gallery in Switzerland in 1990. Matthew Slotover and his business partner Amanda Sharp who founded Frieze Art Fair spent several years plotting Toklas, their elegant restaurant just off The Strand, and he has gone on to open the newly restored Fort Road Hotel in Margate, Kent, whose walls boast works of art in many different media. Recently, these links became even stronger. On Monday evenings every month at L’Escargot we changed the works of art by different artists to enliven the quietest night of the week, and decorate the pale-green walls. I can remember as a restaurateur in London in the 1980s welcoming the Zwemmers who kept the art bookshop on Charing Cross Road and the directors of Thames & Hudson, the art book publishers, as frequent customers. The link between the art world and good food has always been close. At La Colombe d’Or in St-Paul de Vence in France there are paintings by Picasso, Chagall and Calder. There has always been a close link between restaurants and the art on their walls, with the latter often illuminating the restaurant’s history.Īt Kronenhalle restaurant in Zurich, Switzerland, there are several works by Chagall, Braque, Bonnard and Miro collected in the 1940s by the perspicacious restaurateur Gustav Zumsteg. A new establishment in London is almost more of an art gallery than a restaurant.
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