From its opening in 1926 to its role in London’s Cool Britannia era, the restaurant and members’ club has survived a century of changing tastes, celebrity feuds and economic upheaval — and is still reinventing itself.
London’s Quo Vadis has reached its centenary, marking 100 years on Dean Street as one of Soho’s most enduring restaurants and members’ clubs. Since opening on 16 October 1926, the institution has evolved from an Italian dining room into a meeting place for artists, musicians, chefs and media figures, surviving successive changes in ownership, fashion and the neighbourhood around it.
Its history reflects the changing character of Soho itself. Quo Vadis has endured wartime disruption, periods of decline, a high-profile revival during the Cool Britannia years and the financial crisis, before finding a new identity under its current owners, brothers Sam and Eddie Hart, and chef Jeremy Lee.
The restaurant’s longevity has not depended on standing still. Over the decades, it has moved between traditional European cooking, celebrity-fuelled glamour and a more relaxed approach to British seasonal food, while retaining its place in the social life of London’s creative community.
Today, Lee serves generous, broadly European dishes downstairs, while the members’ club upstairs continues to attract people from the worlds of food, art, publishing and entertainment. Its informal house rules capture the irreverent spirit that has helped the institution survive a century of changing social conventions.
Quo Vadis was founded by Italian restaurateur Pepino Leoni, who opened the restaurant at No 27 Dean Street after working in London’s hospitality industry, including at the Savoy. His original menu combined Franco-Italian classics such as ossobuco and melon with Parma ham with more unusual dishes, including sole with bananas. Leoni also encouraged artists to exhibit their work, establishing the restaurant as a gathering place for London’s creative circles.
The building carries another historical connection: neighbouring No 28 Dean Street was once home to Karl Marx. Leoni expanded into adjacent properties as the restaurant grew, helping create the multi-building establishment that later owners would struggle to manage.
Quo Vadis experienced its heyday between the 1950s and the mid-1970s, when it became a destination for high society. But following Leoni’s death in the early 1970s, the restaurant lost some of its standing, eventually becoming a relic of an earlier Soho.
Its fortunes changed again in 1998, when new owners joined forces with chef Marco Pierre White and enlisted artist Damien Hirst to help shape the interiors. The restaurant became part of the era’s exuberant cultural scene, attracting celebrities including Kate Moss, Elton John, Jude Law and members of the Pet Shop Boys. The partnership ended amid a public dispute, and the restaurant once again struggled to keep pace with changing tastes.
The Hart brothers took over in the late 2000s, initially introducing an elaborate British dining room. When the financial crisis made that approach harder to sustain, they brought in Lee in 2012 to develop a more approachable menu rooted in British, French and Italian cooking. Dishes such as pies, profiteroles and the smoked eel and horseradish sandwich became signatures.
For Lee, the challenge of running a restaurant spread across several old townhouses was daunting at first. He remembers looking around the premises and thinking it would be like “sailing the Titanic”. The building’s complexity, however, has become part of its identity.
Quo Vadis’s centenary arrives as Soho continues to change, with its former reputation for late-night excess increasingly giving way to restaurants and other hospitality businesses. Hart sees that transformation as part of the neighbourhood’s continuing evolution rather than a loss of its character.
“Soho has always changed,” he says. “It is less louche than it was; people drink less, take fewer drugs. What we’ve lost in brothels we’ve gained in restaurants and I think that’s a brilliant thing.”
A hundred years after Leoni opened its doors, Quo Vadis remains a place where food, art and social life intersect. Its continued survival has come not from preserving a single golden age, but from adapting to each new one.
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