As Santiago Lastra’s five-hour, nine-course Día de los Muertos collaboration dinner draws to a close, he stands at the pass of his restaurant, Kol, shoulder to shoulder with Michelin-starred chefs Pam Brunton, Jeremy Chan, James Lowe and Andrew Wong. A mariachi band circles the room as diners rise for a standing ovation, snapping photos of the line-up.
Maybe it’s the mezcal talking, but there’s a trippy moment of déjà vu as I catch a glimpse of my friends Jake Kasumov and Marco Mendes – the co-founders of MJMK Restaurants and backers of Kol – on the other side of the open-plan kitchen. Ten years ago, they might have been looking on from behind a podium at the warehouse parties they ran, watching a thousand-strong crowd applaud selectors at the end of a B2B set. Now, something equivalent seems to be happening in their restaurant.
Maybe it’s the mezcal talking, but there’s a trippy moment of déjà vu
As David Byrne of Talking Heads sang: “And you may ask yourself, ‘Well, how did I get here?’” These days, rather abruptly, foodies have become audiophiles, craving a top-flight sound system as much as the perfect pastry. Chefs curate restaurant soundtracks as carefully as their menus. Rappers host food programmes, and DJs launch cocktail-led restaurants. Former nightlife impresarios channel their operational acumen into dining experiences where the line blurs between a meal and a night out.
Try to swing a cat in the capital, and there’s a fair chance you’ll hit a listening bar. However, while there have been bountiful trend pieces bandying about terminology like ‘polyphonic dining’, ‘Kissa-style’, and ‘Japanese-inspired’, not many have contextualised how we arrived here. When exactly did the restaurant become the new nightclub?
Dia De Los Muertos dinner at Kol
Eleonora Boscarelli
Setting the table
Backspin to the early 1980s in downtown Manhattan and the needle slides into the groove. This was the scene where Talking Heads found their feet. Where dirt-cheap rent and a highly creative community transformed derelict buildings into spaces where experimentation and mutation reigned supreme, helmed by the likes of David Mancuso at The Loft, Larry Levan at Paradise Garage and Steve Mass at The Mudd Club; nightlife psychologists who became known for mixing people from all identities and backgrounds, just as much as they did musical genres.
In the intro to Tim Lawrence’s seminal account of the scene, Life and Death on the New York Dance Floor, he explains that, as the economy veered toward recession, partygoers greeted “the night as a hallowed time when they could immerse themselves in an alternative milieu. Drawn to DJs who selected a wide spectrum of sounds, and often heading to venues where creativity and community flourished hand-in-hand, they headed out because the city’s party spaces seemed to operate as sites of progress and pleasure.” That same ethos of innovation and communal celebration now pulses through London’s restaurant scene, where venues embrace eclectic soundscapes and a spirit of inclusivity.
Brilliant Corners
Over a glass of low-intervention red, I catch up with James Dye at Bambi. His wine bar has become one of the most popular spots in London Fields – records are racked up alongside bottles on shelving in the far wall, where speakers from boutique London-based audio company Friendly Pressure are inset, and the floors and ceilings are panelled to improve acoustics. Similar to Mendes and Kasumov running nightlife brands Unleash and Boneca before transitioning into hospitality, Dye directed a company named Black Atlantic over a decade ago, which ran warehouse parties and music events, promoting artists such as Moodymann, Kerri Chandler and Modeselektor.
The original music director at Bambi was Charlie Dark, Attica Blues boss and founder of Run Dem Crew. He was legendary for his sets at Shoreditch nightclub Plastic People, which, when I was discovering London in my twenties, felt a lot like the city’s analogue to The Loft.
“Plastic People was a big influence on us. It was an amazing platform for so many people – the intimacy, the quality and the spirit behind it – it’s kind of everyone’s spiritual home,” says Dye. “But what I always remember is Plastic People’s off-the-shelf Funktion-One sound system and the room that Ade Fakile completely mapped out with lasers to make it as close to acoustic perfection as possible. You can’t just install nice-looking, fancy speakers and hope for the best. Plastic was the opposite of that, wasn’t it?”
Plastic People was an amazing platform for so many people – it’s kind of everyone’s spiritual home
Plastic People ran from 1994 to 2015, spurred on by sets from residents like Theo Parrish and Floating Points that mixed free jazz with Detroit techno, disco and everything in between. But the heart of the club was Ade Fakile, who opened Plastic People three years after moving from Nigeria. In an interview with The Guardian, he explains that the only thing that he originally got right was the sound system, spending about 40% of his income on its rental fees.
“I had every DJ I wanted playing there, from Masters at Work to the first ever Daft Punk gig in London,” says Fakile. “All of these kinds of DJs have studios, and spend so much money on their speakers – so when they go out to play it’s often a let-down. But if you give them something that’s as close as possible to their studio, they’ll tell their friends.” Fakile’s ‘build-it-and-they-will-come’ attitude put speakers in the spotlight. People came; and didn’t leave.
PA system at Bambi
Starters
Around the time that Plastic People shuttered, a new type of venue started to open in London – bars and restaurants with decks and speakers that DJs wouldn’t dismiss out of hand, where sound systems were given equal billing to food and drink. There was Spiritland, a listening bar that originally launched as a pop-up at Merchant’s Tavern, a gastropub on the next road over from Plastic People. It offered well-considered food and drinks alongside vintage rotary mixers, high-end turntables and custom speakers. Early success led it to open permanent sites at King’s Cross and the Royal Festival Hall.
The venue that arguably kept the spirit of early 1980s NYC and Plastic People going is Brilliant Corners, which opened in 2013 on Kingsland Road in Dalston, a year prior to Spiritland. Launched by brothers Amit and Aneesh Patel, Brilliant Corners served potent cocktails, low-intervention wine and Japanese food, with some of the best speakers in the city and a dancefloor that would stay kinaesthetic until the small hours of the morning.
“We recognised that London was missing a public venue that permanently housed a sound system similar to those we experienced at David Mancuso’s Loft parties and Beauty & the Beat,” says Amit. “Their respective approaches to not just sound but also playing music and hosting parties were our main inspirations. We spent the rest of our time at Plastic People at either the Balance or the Voices Collective nights.”
The dining room at Brilliant Corners
Sam A Harris
During early days, the Patels’ aim was to get the sound system working and not go bankrupt, but as the years went on, that mission evolved into offering exceptional hospitality, studying the work of Danny Meyer in his book Setting the Table, Nick Lander in The Art of the Restaurateur and Russell Norman’s Polpo Steps of Service, and using St John as a reference point, while learning wine from Kate Thal of Green & Blue Wines: “The education she gave allowed us to bring together great wine and music, and navigate the endless complaints we used to get in 2013 when serving skin-contact wine.”
How times have changed: since then, restaurants and bars in a similar template have proliferated, including Jumbi, Levan and Hausu in Peckham, Space Talk in Farringdon, Stereo in Covent Garden, The Tent at the End of the Universe in Fitzrovia, and Seed Library in Shoreditch; and orange wine no longer raises many eyebrows. While there’s a lot of conversation percolating around this fresh trend of audiophile-friendly bars and restaurants, it’s important to note that the Patels have been doing it for well over a decade.
Goodbye Horses
Adam Kang
Mains
I catch up with Alex Young and George de Vos, founders of Goodbye Horses and The Dreamery on Halliford Street in De Beauvoir. Inspired by the bruin cafes such as Glouglou of de Vos’s native Holland – old-school pubs serving natural wines in residential areas – Goodbye Horses also boasts a top-notch sound system, built by Izaak Gray, who de Vos met during his five-year stint working at Brilliant Corners.
“We just wanted people to be able to speak while listening to good music. You can’t do that with a shitty sound system,” Young explains. “We want our diners to be able to speak to each other audibly without shouting over music, and still be able to hear it in the background.”
“There’s definitely a trend of buying good sound systems,” de Vos chimes in. “Sometimes it’s done very well. Sometimes it’s ‘Hey, we’ve got a nice sound system in place,’ which doesn’t always work. But I think it’s also that people realise there’s this extra element that you can create atmosphere and romance with.”
I’ve known sound engineer Izaak Gray for over a decade and catch up with him while he’s installing a system at The Roses of Elagabalus, an experiential environment and queer performance space on Kingsland Road in Dalston. He’s renowned for being one of the best in the industry, inspired by British hi-fi brands like Kef, Tannoy, BK Electronics and Quad to create celebrated sound systems in venues like The BBE Store, Nine Lives, and Madcats.
Interiors at Bambi
When asked why he thinks there’s been such a surge in the popularity of restaurants championing high-fidelity vinyl, he responds: “It’s a confluence of two factors. From the perspective of a businessman, it’s all about demographic shifts. An ageing population wants a less volumised but more refined experience, which is why you’ll find such amazing wine at a lot of these venues. From the perspective of an audiophile, it’s an attempt to harness the ephemeral. You can’t reproduce the experience of listening to an incredible record and sound system via a phone, TV or laptop. It resists packaging,” says Gray.
While sitting next to a pair of Technics turntables at Marquee Moon in Stoke Newington, I eat a beef rendang pie that feels like a reflection of the music that Larry Levan, David Mancuso or Theo Parrish would have played, juxtaposing incongruous genres to create a new texture – in this case, crossfading Indonesian and British flavours together into an intelligent pub dish. Marquee Moon and All My Friends are the latest projects from Stuart Glen, co-founder of The Cause nightclub, which the company started in 2022 when it was looking for a permanent site for the venue (eventually, in the Docklands).
“In all honesty, we were desperate to find something that would give us revenue and our staff work,” says Glen. “We just wanted somewhere to chill and drink and socialise without having to make the effort of going to an industrial park.” When asked why he thinks people are gravitating from nightclubs to bars and restaurants offering good food and wine, he answers, “Look, you get life cycles of people that are into nightclubs and ultimately the frequency which they attend drops. So a cool listening bar is an easy access point, where like-minded people can talk about music and culture without paying £20 to stay in a really loud room until 6am.”
Jules Pearson – editor of London on the Inside, who has conceptualised over 350 different restaurants under the aegis of hotel and hospitality group Ennismore and arguably has her finger on the pulse of hospitality trends more than anyone – concurs, but also points out that the younger tastes may be changing as well. “Perhaps Covid made people wary of getting up close and personal in rooms full of strangers, so listening bars are a new way of going out to listen to music without being in a club environment,” she says. “Millennials are ageing, and I think the younger generation doesn’t have the same desire to stay up late but still wants to go out for a drink and listen to music – then be in bed by midnight.” Ho-hum.
Crispin Somerville
Barry Cowen
Afters
You may have noticed that the majority of the restaurateurs who are running so-called listening bars have a background in nightlife. But that’s not just specific to these particular venues. Many movers and shakers in the hospitality industry borrowed from their experience in music to create cool venues where people want to spend their time and money.
Such is the case with Crispin Somerville, a former MTV host who brought his experience from running El Colmillo nightclub in Mexico City with Sam Hart (co-founder of Barrafina, Quo Vadis, and others) across to launch London’s successful Mexican restaurant line El Pastor. For Somerville, it’s similar to having an audience with a limited window in order to provide a memorably upbeat experience. As an avid former (and sometimes current) clubber, he felt a sense of responsibility when opening El Pastor in King’s Cross on the sites of institutions like Bagleys and The Cross, where he spent “so many formative and euphoric hours on the dance floors.”
“I definitely picked up a few pointers while in the music industry. Namely, an opportunity to connect and empathise with an audience while making sure to not compromise on creativity and end up being homogenous when compared with the wealth of other appealing options out there,” says Somerville. When asked if there were any specific venues that had an influence on London’s food scene, he namedrops The End as an inspiration.
Layo Paskin was legendary in the international electronic music scene in the 1990s, cutting his teeth DJing house music in Camden Market at the tender age of 18 and swiftly becoming famous as part of the British DJ and production duo Layo & Bushwacka! with Matthew Benjamin. Together, Paskin and Benjamin co-founded The End in Holborn, which ran from 1995 to 2009 and had a massive influence on both club culture and electronic music.
I think that’s quite special in a world where most people are by and large disconnected from the means of their own production
Perhaps more unexpectedly, it also influenced London’s restaurant scene. When Paskin and his sister Zoë opened The Palomar in Soho, and then The Barbary and Evelyn’s Table, among others, they brought its spirit of intimacy and thoughtfulness across. Paskin believes that there are fundamental threads that connect the way that music venues, bars and restaurants are run.
“When we opened The End, we prioritised the experience. Every detail – sound, lighting, and talent – was carefully considered to create something exceptional,” says Paskin. “That same philosophy extends to our restaurants. While the setting may be different, our focus remains the same: creating places we want to go to.” Does he see other parallels? “What we do see is individuals, like myself, moving between the two worlds, bringing influences and learnings from one to the other. For me, the appeal of intimate nightclubs mirrors that of intimate restaurants. In both, size and atmosphere are key – creating spaces where people feel that they are connected.”
In a way, this echoes the way that Gray describes setting up a sound system. “If you really want to do it properly, you’re going to have to take a huge amount of time every step of the way: you’ve got to get a player, a pre-amp, an amplifier, a crossover network and then a set of transducers. Then you’ve got to make sure they’re all working together properly, and you need to place them in an environment,” explains Gray. “And that connection is one that spans gaps between science, engineering, music theory, the social animal, and ultimately the human that experiences the music. I think that’s quite special in a world where most people are by and large disconnected from the means of their own production.”
To beatmatch is to adjust the tempos of two songs so that their beats align perfectly, making the transition between them smooth and unnoticeable. One of the most satisfying parts of being on a dancefloor is hearing two tracks that are in complementary musical keys meld together seamlessly. Over the past two decades, we seem to have experienced this en masse as London’s food and music scenes grew together: what you hear inspires what you taste, and vice versa. From the floors of Plastic People to the bar counter at Brilliant Corners, what started as a background hum is now a clear and resonant melody.
