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Restaurateur Sam Hart on the taste of things to come
The London restaurateur dishes on his early days in Mexico and the exciting changes underway at his Soho eateries, Quo Vadis and Barrafina
I grew up in the restaurant business, as my dad owned a country-house hotel, and around the kitchen table there was always a lot of restaurant chat. I'd seen my dad working very hard, all hours, and had my eyes wide open about the realities of the industry. I was originally convinced that I didn't want anything to do with it.
When I left university, I worked for a money broker in Mexico City and quickly realised it wasn't my calling. That's when I became more interested in hospitality, and I ended up opening a bar and nightclub in Mexico. After a few years, I wanted to come back to Europe and was thinking of opening a nightclub in Barcelona, so I moved there to get the project off the ground. However, I found that living back in the daytime again was really very pleasant, so my days as a nightclub owner were over. As I was hanging about looking at venues, I also had lots of free time, which I spent in Spanish restaurants, shopping in La Boqueria food market, cooking and eating. Then one day I got a call from my brother Eddie asking, "Why don't we do something together?" And that's how it all started.
We started Fino in London in 2003, serving Spanish tapas, and that was followed by the first of our Barrafina restaurants. We were looking for sites for a second Barrafina when the idea of Quo Vadis came about. Our office was at Fino on Charlotte Street and Barrafina was on Frith Street, so we used to walk up and down Dean Street going between the two. We kept looking at Quo Vadis and thinking what an amazing building it was and how we'd love to get our hands on it. Then, one of the agents showing us the Barrafina sites asked us if we would be interested in it, as it was unofficially on the market. We ended up opening at the location in 2008.
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We didn't feel that the building suited Spanish cuisine and we liked the idea of doing something different, so we focused on British food – relatively simply cooked, but with amazing ingredients. When we first opened, we had items on the menu that were luxurious in a traditional sense – lobster, sweetbreads, steaks, turbot – with almost a grill-room feel. We did that for three or four years until we partnered up with Jeremy Lee, who brought an extra dimension with his cooking, although still in the same realm of high-quality, fuss-free dishes.
It had been a members' club when Damien Hirst and Matthew Freud were involved with the Marco Pierre White iteration in the late 1990s. Conceptually, the idea really appealed to us, so we reinstated the club on the first and second floor. We thought some of the other members' clubs, especially the ones that had been around for a while, had grown quite big and lost a lot of their atmosphere. Because Eddie and I are always around, it feels more personal.
(Image credit: Jason Lowe Ltd)
We're currently refurbishing the interior, and when it reopens on 12 September there will be a few big changes. Barrafina will be moving in to the ground floor and introducing a tapas bar, which means that Jeremy's restaurant will become smaller in size. He's had a few weeks to work on some exciting new dishes and ways of doing things, but it will retain the same style as before and keep some of the Quo Vadis classics, such as the smoked eel sandwich, on the menu.
Then there's the huge transformation of the members' area. On the second floor, we've knocked a couple of rooms together to put in a new bar. The first floor will have a dedicated members' restaurant at the far end, as well as a complete refurbishment with beautiful new flooring, seating, lighting and so on.
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Along the back wall will hang a huge, specially commissioned tapestry by our resident artist John Broadley. Centuries ago, Soho was renowned as a centre of tapestry-making, which inspired this new piece. It will feature hundreds of different real people – Soho characters from past and present. It's the 90th anniversary of Quo Vadis, so it's been around for a long time in plenty of different guises – we really feel we're custodians of the building for our generation.
SAM HART is a seasoned restaurateur who, alongside his brother Eddie, has established a hospitality empire that includes mini-chain Barrafina and members' club Quo Vadis; barrafina.co.uk, quovadissoho.co.uk
