With Disney premiering its documentary In Vogue - the 90s, and the return of Oasis there’s currently a lot of retro love for that period of London’s history. Not only was it a time of huge change on the fashion and music front but London’s restaurant scene was on fire too with restaurants getting bigger and blingier along with some of the city’s most iconic venues opening their doors for the first time.
If you’re loving the whole 90s retro thing and want to rediscover the city’s restaurants that best represent that period (and which are still open in one guise or another), then let us be your guide.
Quaglino's
St James - 16 Bury Street, London SW1Y 6AJ
The original Quaglino's opened in the late 1920s and in the 1950s the late Queen made headlines for being the first reigning UK monarch to dine in a restaurant when she had dinner here. But it was the restaurant's revival by Sir Terence Conran in the Nineties that propelled this St James spot back into the headlines.
The city’s movers and shakers loved the dramatic staircase entrance, the infamous 'cigarette girls' and everyone wanted the most nickable ashtrays in London. Food seemed almost a side order to the glamour but the one thing you would have taken note of were the huge fruits de mer platters. The fruits de mer has become the Quaglino's cocktail and no-one's smoking down here anymore, but it's still a buzzy place to come. Most recently you'll have spotted it stealing the limelight in the scene in Netflix's One Day where Dexter takes Emma to show off his new-found fame.
Le Caprice (now Arlington)
St James - 20 Arlington St, London SW1A 1RJ
It would be easier to list which celebrities didn't eat at Le Caprice in the nineties, such was the restaurant's allure to the rich and famous. But, along with San Lorenzo, this was probably Princess Diana's favourite restaurant (she always sat at table nine). Diana was such a regular customer along with the likes of Mick Jagger, Madonna et al that merely securing a reservation for lunch or dinner here was proof of your social capital in the nineties.
The restaurant itself may be no more (although there are plans to resurrect it at the Rosewood Chancery hotel) but everyone knows that Jeremy King's Arlington, which sits on the same spot, is Caprice 2.0 in all but name.
Nobu
Mayfair - 19 Old Park Ln, London W1K 1LB
When the Como Metropolitano opened its doors on Park Lane in 1997, its modern luxury design made it stand out from London's grande dame hotels. It didn't hurt that it also had the city's most star-studded hangout, the Met Bar, and the city's first Nobu restaurant. Given the ubiquity of sushi restaurants in London now, it's hard to imagine just what a big deal the glamourous sushi spot with its famous black cod dish was.
Speaking of black - the 'colour' most associated with the 90s, we're loving this note from Fay Maschler's review of Nobu "in the run up to swinging London's Fashion Week every single female customer, nearly every male customer and the entire waiting staff were wearing black".
St John
Clerkenwell - 26 St John Street, London EC1M 4AY
Almost midway through the Nineties, one of the restaurants that would come to sum up British cooking to the world was born. St John saw the dream team of Fergus Henderson, Trevor Gulliver and Jon Spiteri opening up in a former bacon smokehouse just off Smithfield Market in 1994. Not only did the restaurant look singular with its whitewashed brick walls, but the menu wasn't like anything else in London at that time. Think blood cake and fried eggs or the most famous roast bone marrow and parsley salad.
Anyone working in the media in Clerkenwell at that time used it as their canteen, before it transformed into the place of foodie pilgrimage that it is today.
Atlantic Bar & Grill (now Brasserie Zedel)
Soho - 20 Sherwood Street, London W1F 7ED
It's hard to explain just what a scene the Atlantic was in the nineties. The massive subterranean dining room was opened by restaurateur Oliver Peyton in 1994 and became an instant place to be seen at. Part of that was down to the "clipboard nazis" who held sway over who actually made it into the restaurant. But the late 3am licence also had a lot to do with it. There are many people, ourselves included who remember coming here for lunch, that turned into dinner than ended up in tripping out of the doors in the early hours of the morning.
Now that glorious dining room has been given a new lease of life as Brasserie Zedel. It may not match the Atlantic in the cool stakes, but it's still doing great business serving up a popular Parisian cafe menu.
Pied a Terre
Fitzrovia - 34 Charlotte Street, London W1T 2NH
Were you really living the Nineties dream if you didn't occasionally rinse your entertaining budget at Pied a Terre? Restaurateur David Moore's restaurant in Fitzrovia was handily situated right next to some of the city's biggest advertising agencies making it an obvious choice when they needed somewhere to go for lunch with their clients. This was the restaurant at the height of its fame with two Michelin stars in 1999 when chef Tom Aikens infamously branded a chef with a hot knife in an incident that summed up the superstar chef period of the late nineties.
It’s now the longest-running Michelin-starred restaurant in London with a menu that marries modern British dishes with classical French techniques.
The Eagle
Farringdon - 159 Farringdon Rd, Farringdon, London EC1R 3AL
Every time you go into a pub in London with pared-back design, wooden floorboards and a seasonal menu up on the blackboard that changes regularly, you have The Eagle to thank. This groundbreaking pub in Farringdon was the first of a new breed of public houses that spawned the term gastropub, serving up restaurant-quality food but in laid-back pub surroundings. It also didn’t hurt that it was next door to the old Guardian offices.
Little has changed in the 30-odd years since. The pub is still under the same ownership and has had only three head chefs in all that time. Go and get that great steak sandwich.
The River Cafe
Hammersmith - Thames Wharf, Rainville Road, London W6 9HA
Having opened at the tail end of the eighties as the city's most glamorous (and expensive) works canteen, the River Cafe really came into its own in the nineties, not least because of a TV documentary about the restaurant. The standout star of Channel 4's documentary The Italian Kitchen was a mouthy and enthusiastic sous chef by the name of Jamie Oliver; the rest is history. This was also the period where the restaurant got its Michelin star and when it unveiled its cookbook containing the legendarily difficult recipe for the chocolate Nemesis cake.
Today The River Cafe is every bit as much a celebrity magnet who flock to enjoy its excellent modern Italian menu.
Daphne's
South Kensington -112 Draycott Ave, London SW3 3AE
When restaurateur Mogens Tholstrup took over Daphne's, holding a glittering launch party, with most of London's beautiful people invited, it quickly became home to the city's 'It girls'. On any given night you might find the late Tara Palmer-Tomkinson, Amanda de Cadenet or Tamara Beckwith toying with a plate of truffle pasta at a table there.
Now it’s still the place to go for truffles in season or to glam up for a cocktail.
Wagamama
Various locations, originally Bloomsbury
It's hard to imagine a London where the idea of sitting down to slurp noodles at a communal table was revolutionary, but that's the period that Alan Yau's first Wagamama was launched into. There was so much in the way of novelty at this Japanese ramen bar, from its pared back - some would say bleak - canteen design to a menu that first introduced the masses to chicken katsu. Now there are over 100 Wagamamas all over the world - but London was the first.
Wagamama photo via Wikipedia.
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