Kettner's

This is a love story. It starts in discreet hotel Kettner’s, shrouded in Soho’s maze of streets, where a woman awaits her beloved on one of the bar’s velvet banquettes, sipping a glass of champagne and furtively eyeing the other patrons. Jazz meanders away in the background and the concerns of London’s media class play out in hushed voices. Then, the swish of the side door — she looks up, but no, it’s a production assistant flown in from LA who demands the Monday lunchtime discount and types loudly. At last, rattled, with suitcase in hand, her love clatters in. They embrace, together again for one last hurrah.

But this is also a break-up story — not between myself and my husband — rather with the city itself. After spending the last eight years in a one-bed in Camden, we’re following a band of DFLs (or FILTH — Failed In London Trying Here — depending on which side of the M25 you’re on) to Hastings, which is why we’re at this Soho House outpost, rekindling an affair with London itself before we fly the coop. This concept doesn’t feel quite as romantic later on, when I’m yelling the lyrics to Usher’s Yeah! in Mr Smith’s face as we sink house whites in The Three Greyhounds pub; but Kettner’s is so gracious, so utterly charming — with its horseshoe-shaped marble champagne bar to one side and staff with a politeness as polished as the parquet — with such an intrinsic air of old-school glamour, that it all feels a bit Brief Encounter. 

Amid all this velvet, tassel and art deco decadence, we feel as though we should order our Vouvrays and Vertes, and call each other ‘dahling’, in a clipped, RP voice, or perhaps a French accent — after all, the hotel became famous as the city’s first French restaurant, opened in 1867 by Auguste Kettner, chef to Napoleon III, no less. The location was ill-reputed, but the food much less so, attracting a famous clientele: Oscar Wilde, Winston Churchill, Agatha Christie, and King Edward VII, who made less salubrious activities, such as carrying out affairs in the rooms upstairs, fashionable. He allegedly dallied with his actress mistress Lillie Langtrey via a secret tunnel from The Palace Theatre. We never find this ‘tunnel of love’, but the displays of framed — and eyes-out pointy — vintage corsetry in the lobby and a stash of condoms in rooms (hey, when in Soho!) show that carrying on, ahem, carries on here. A ‘mini’ bar with a full cocktail kit and spirits lined up like perfumes on a vanity counter feels all the more encouraging.  

We have zero plans to use any of the above though, as we flop on the super-king-size bed — after dealing with painters and movers, and the emotional upheaval of saying goodbye to a place where we met, dated, became engaged and spent the million days of lockdown together, we’re just happy for a soft place to land (literally — and yes, I checked the Soho Home website, the goose-down pillows are £175 a piece). When it comes to decor, our Medium Room has rummaged through a Fin de Siècle dressing-up box, modelling William Morris prints, fringed tuffets and bathroom tiles with lace-inspired patterns. The art nouveau lamps are a touch too soft to work under, but most guests here are undercover in a less laborious sense. It’s an accessible room, so there’s no bath tub, but the wet-room is spacious and there are plentiful Cowshed and Soho Skin products (the latter of which we can keep).

We’re not here to stay indoors though. We’re pushing 40, our friends have already migrated en masse to ‘who gives a shires’ to pop out children, we’ve discussed getting wills twice in 2025 alone. ‘There is no time, out we must go’ — I implore, shaking Mr Smith awake. But first, downstairs for stomach-lining oeufs mayonnaise, the silkiest of lamb chops and beignets filled with Gruyère and Comté; there’s no faffing about with the food here, it’s simple, Gallic, superbe. A melonade- and jasmine-infused highball and citrusy Romilly 29 give us the oomph we need to stay the course.   

Soho wasn’t really my stamping-ground; I found it tourist-clogged and felt I’d missed out on the more fun days of its famous dandies — what I would have given to flounce about with Sebastien Horsley, Quentin Crisp et al. My beloved Intrepid Fox, Sin and The Crobar hangouts have closed or moved, and even G-A-Y announces it’s on sale days after we leave. Like a long-gone lover, the city has moved on and changed; but, it’s doing all right without me. Even on the Monday and Tuesday nights we’re there, it’s alive — we bounce from Mr Fogg’s to the French House to Bar Termini, each within a five-minute walk of Kettner’s, struggling to find standing space in all. We stop at the — much tidier than I remember it — Sun and 13 Cantons pub to try the pig-neck skewers and sour-pineapple curry of Cambodian pop-up, Mamapen; then somehow end up in ‘adult entertainment’ shop Mood, giggling schoolgirlishly at its exotic offerings, wondering what Kettner’s housekeeping might think should they find any of this in our room. Then, a comforting sight: old favourite, the bizarrely themed Garlic and Shots, is still here. I drag Mr Smith to its zombie-accessorised basement bar to do shots in time to Pantera songs. 

What joy, then, that Kettner’s check-out time is 12 noon — even when you’re dreadfully hungover, it feels like a safe space, with a QR code for room-service breakfast and a very understanding man at reception giving us the late check-out options. But no, it’s time to leave Kettner’s and London at large. In this state, there’s a nostalgic weightiness to every sight, and Sarah Maclachlan’s I Will Remember You plays in my fuzzy head as garlands of red Chinatown lanterns dance merrily above, the Pleasuredrome spa puts out its bins, and a pedicab in drag tries to kill us. Will there be shops selling melonpan and bondage straightjackets just steps apart on the coast? Will there be bars where the weeknight crowd is still on the ‘blood shots’ at midnight? Cuisines from all over the globe? Will I miss it all terribly? Who can say… but, London, we’ll always have Kettner’s, dahling.