When news slipped out on the internet last week that the St John empire was expanding westwards to Soho with the addition of a new restaurant and 16-room hotel, Twitter was on fire. But the only news to be had was a brief interview in Design Magazine which was swiftly put where only subscribers could see it.
In an attempt to liberate that information, Hot Dinners has been pursuing Fergus Henderson’s partner Trevor Gulliver ever since and today we caught some time with him when he was between flights, to quiz him about the move up West.
We first asked Trevor what made them take on this Leicester Square site, where the famous Manzi’s restaurant once stood. ‘It’s both circumstance and serendipity,’ he told us. ‘Anyone who’s a Londoner will have a relationship with Manzi’s – It’s where I first met my father-in-law and it’s where Fergus’s father would take him. As an ad exec back in the days, it was where I’d spend the whole afternoon.’
‘It’s part of the streetscape behind Leicester Square – that back end of the Swiss Centre – where you’ve got wheely bins, needles and your feet stick to the monosodium glutamate on the pavement. In fact you can still see the cards for a Russian model in the building opposite when you’re on the second floor. It’s good to reincarnate it. We just became very intrigued with the idea of it.’
‘They’d left it like the Marie Celeste,’ Trevor explains of his first visit to the building to investigate. ‘All the beds were made, the restaurant was all laid out – it was a bit like going into a department store where you could buy a hotel and restaurant. But it was in a time warp.
So what are they actually going to do to create their new hotel? ‘We’re leaving the four walls and gutting it,’ he told us. ‘ It was very tired – so we’ll bring it up to modern standards. But it’s not just health and safety, it’s design as well. There will be 70 covers in the restaurant and a late bar upstairs as well as 16 bedrooms, including two which can become a two –room suite on the top floor.
It may not be common knowledge, but the old Manzi’s used have hotel room upstairs, although as Trevor points out, ‘no-one looked out the windows, if you know what I mean.’ And the idea of keeping the site as a hotel was appealing. ‘I like the idea of an old-fashioned sense of an inn or a hostelry, where you could eat a great meal and then repair upstairs to bed,’ Trevor explained.
The chef who will head up the kitchen here hasn’t yet been chosen, but will come from one of the two St John restaurants. ‘One of the folks we’ve got here will take it on,’ he told us. ‘There are plenty who’ve grown up and are ready for the challenge.’ As for the menu, ‘in the same way that bread and wine is different from St John, this will be different again. It’s a hotel, so we’ll be open from 6 in the morning doing breakfast. We’re looking forward to doing morning goods, patisserie and eggs. We’ll also be open until 2 in the morning. There isn’t much in the way of decent food to eat then, so the idea of having good food available at that time is a nice thing.’
The current site currently has ‘no roof and no floor – we’ve started so we’re going to have to finish’. As for an opening date, Trevor says; ‘When a hotel opens it never closes so we just want it to be right – we’re having a lot of fun with it but we want to get it right. We’re aiming for late next summer, but you can never tell.’
And the name of the new venue? 'The St John Hotel, of course!'
Find out more about St John.
Click here for more news about upcoming restaurant openings in London.
And if you'd like to keep up-to-date with all our news, make sure you follow Hot Dinners on Twitter.
