QUAGLINO'S - The Staircase Calls Again

There are restaurants you walk into, and there are restaurants you make an entrance at. Quaglino's has always been firmly the latter. Pause at the top of that sweeping staircase, look down across the room, and you understand at once why this place has drawn royalty, writers, film stars and London's café society since 1929.

Last week I joined the launch party for its reopening and was lucky enough to be walked around the room by Martin Williams, Chief Executive of The Evolv Collection, the group Sir Terence Conran founded and the same Conran who rescued Quaglino's in 1993. What struck me, glass in hand, was how clearly Martin sees the task. This is not a museum piece and it is not a reinvention. It is a restoration with a wicked sense of humour.

A journey on a plate, and in a glass

The organising idea is the life of the founder. Giovanni Quaglino was born in Piedmont, was maître d'hôtel at the Hôtel Martinez in Cannes by the age of seventeen, and honed his craft at The Savoy before opening his own room in St James's. Everything here follows that route. The food menus, the cocktails, the wine list and the Champagne bar all trace Piedmont to Cannes to The Savoy, with, as Martin put it, “a touch of royalty thrown in.”

For readers of this magazine, the Champagne bar is the natural first stop: 24 champagnes, every one available by the glass as well as the bottle. That is a generous, grown-up list for a room of this scale. My own choice on the night was Laurent-Perrier, and it more than earned its place.

Martin sketched the ideal evening for me. Start at the Champagne bar. Take in some seafood. Go through to your table. Then finish at the Tabac. It is dinner as a progression, which is exactly how Quaglino's was always meant to be enjoyed.

Fruits de mer, on wheels

Conran's 1993 design was famous for its great seafood display, and the new team have nodded to it with a twist. The Fruits de Mer offering serves molluscs and crustaceans alongside modern ceviche and tiradito small plates, and a gigantic trolley rolls out into the restaurant laden with crustacea and cured fish. It is pure theatre, and I suspect it will become the moment every table waits for.

I took a seat at the newly returned Fruits de Mer counter with a glass (or two) of Laurent-Perrier and worked my way through the seafood menu. Jersey Rock oysters came three ways: natural, with a classic mignonette, and with a sea buckthorn hot sauce that brought a bright, fruity kick. Cheshire Smokehouse smoked salmon arrived with crème fraîche, caper and dill, followed by salmon tartare served on endive barquettes and dusted with kelp powder.

Then came the surprise of the night: king crab legs with a Marmite and honey emulsion. Yes, really, and it works brilliantly, the sweet and savoury depth playing beautifully against the delicate crab. A seared yellowfin tuna carpaccio with pickled red onion and garlic chips rounded things off.

Champagne and oysters will never not be the perfect match. The crisp, saline freshness of the Laurent-Perrier lifted every bite.

Smoke without fire

The dessert bar is where the playfulness really shows. Styled as a Cannes tabac, it is a tribute to Quaglino's long and colourful relationship with smoke: Sir Terence's beloved cigars, the cigarette girls who worked the room in the 1930s and again in the 1990s, and the famous Q ashtray. Martin told me 16,000 of them were pocketed by guests in a single year.

So here you will find chocolate ashtrays, cannoli cigars and edible helium balloons meant to suggest drifting smoke. The idea, Martin admitted, came after a visit to Grant Achatz's Alinea in Chicago, and he wanted to bring an expression of it to London as part of “a very playful environment” built around serious food.

A room built for performance

Quaglino's has always been famous for cabaret and live music, and Martin wanted the restaurant itself to feel like a theatre. Raised booths line one side like royal boxes. At the heart of the room sits a new centre stage that works either as a second performance space or as a spectacular table for twelve for elevated dining. I can think of few more dramatic places in London to host a celebration.

Ninety-seven years on the pillars

For the art, Evolv turned to Paul Davis, one of Sir Terence's favourite artists, whose work already greets guests at the entrance of Bluebird. The brief was irresistible: if Conran commissioned you today, what would you make? Davis's answer runs around the room. Each pillar represents a decade of Quaglino's, from the 1920s all the way to the present. Martin has a soft spot for the 1980s and 1990s pillars, and having seen them, so do I.

Davis has also painted the three most important figures in the restaurant's story: Her Majesty the Queen, who in 1956 became the first reigning monarch to dine in a public restaurant, right here; Sir Terence Conran with his trademark cigar; and Giovanni Quaglino himself.

The Q Bar, day and night

The Q Bar has been a favourite of high society for three decades, and it has been brought back as a destination in its own right, a place to drop in simply for a superb cocktail, including reimagined Savoy classics, set against the room's Art Deco bones. Overhead, the lighting in the famous glass ceiling, a fixture since Conran's first incarnation of the room, glows green by day and shifts to sunset hues by night. It neatly marks the venue's two personalities, with one menu by day and another by night.

The daytime side deserves a mention too. In the spirit of Conran's ‘democratisation of dining’, there is an accessible offer of Ten Pound Plates, so you need not wait for a special occasion to walk down that staircase. In the kitchen, Executive Chef Daniel Scott works alongside Group Culinary Consultant Miller Prada, formerly of Michelin-starred Humo, on signatures including Vitello Tonnato skewers, Pissaladière, Turbot Mountbatten and Lamb Cutlet Milanese.

The verdict

Plenty of grand old names have been dusted off and lost their soul in the process. Quaglino's hasn't. It feels glamorous, mischievous and, above all, alive. For me, two things stood out: the Laurent-Perrier and that audacious king crab. But if I had to choose one moment to return for, it would be oysters and LP at the Fruits de Mer counter, which was simply divine. Book a table, but arrive early. Start with a glass of champagne at the bar, and take your time on that staircase.

Quaglino's, 16 Bury Street, St James's, London SW1Y 6AJ. Reopened 7 October 2026. Reservations: quaglinos-restaurant.co.uk

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