Restaurants

By Guy Dimond. Photography Michael Franke

Karl Marx used to live here. Not in the polished dining room with its fine wine list and tempting seafood, but on the top floor, in a cramped garret, from 1851-1856, enduring terrible hardship. Until recently you could ask the staff at Quo Vadis to let you in for a peek. They would fetch the key so you could peer at what they claimed was the great philosopher’s chair and desk – complete with a dog-eared copy of FourFourTwo playfully left on it (presumably on loan from his footie-mad mate, Friedrich Engels).

Now Quo Vadis has new owners, and the receptionist misheard my enquiry as ‘Groucho Marx’, and initially misdirected me to the Groucho Club next door. The father of communism, it seems, has been swept under the carpet, the room repainted, and his former digs are now used as a staff office.

The new owners of Quo Vadis are the Hart brothers, Eddie and Sam, who also run the excellent Spanish restaurants Fino and Barrafina just a short stroll away. They’ve kept the distinctive stained glass windows, smartened up the flooring and just about everything else, and replaced the ghastly artworks formerly on the walls with more tasteful items. There are only a few traces of Iberia on the menu; razor clams, grilled a la plancha (on a metal plate) with a simple dressing of garlic, chilli and olive oil. Another Spanish influence was a starter of crème fraîche with a layer of tomato jelly on top, topped by tomato ‘essence’ (juice) and crayfish tails. The rest of the menu’s a mix of tersely described true Brit and Modern European dishes.

‘Is the veal rose, or white?’ Our question perplexed the waiter, who wandered off to the kitchen to find out. British, and the ethically preferable rose veal it transpired, so we ordered it; very nice it was too, pan-fried with sage butter. Crab tagliatelle was another successful dish, the pasta al dente and the crab meat fresh. A side dish of ‘heritage tomato’ and fennel salad lived up to the sell, as the tomato tasted as if it had just been plucked from a vine in Andalucía – vibrant with flavour, not the usual hothouse fruit.

The star dish though had to be summer pudding. Drenched in the juice of red berries, the individual portion had just the right ratio of soggy bread to ripe berries, and is a treat you shouldn’t miss.

So, we liked the food; but the cover charge, and a few other prices, verge on cheeky. Worse though, the service on our visit – admittedly in the first week – was all over the place. The waiters were too busy fussing among themselves to notice the diners; we witnessed one disgruntled man waving the bill over his head for a couple of minutes, attempting to pay. Orders were confused, and we were brought the bill twice – the second time after we’d already paid.

On request, an obliging manager gave us a quick tour of the private members’ club upstairs. To join the Quo Vadis Club you need to know the Harts, or be chums with their chums, and still pay £500 pa. Yet it was heaving. It’s where the Hart brothers were, amid much rhetorical back-slapping and downed cocktails.

Fond of a drink himself, Karl Marx wrote ‘Be careful to trust a person who does not like wine.’ But given the muddle that the service currently is – the staff seemed barely trained – the Harts might do better to focus their attention on getting the restaurant right before letting their hair down with the bourgeoisie in the drinking club upstairs.

Time Out Issue 1973: June 12-18 2008