London's one-stop party palaces: from MNKY HSE to Park Chinois

One-dimensional clubs are out, replaced by one-stop party palaces where you can dine, drink and dance. Claire Coleman on how Londoners are living it up now
MNKY HSE’s secret corridor
Claire Coleman20 October 2016

Deep underground in a dimly lit, opulently decorated domed vault in Mayfair, dinner is drawing to a close. Accompanied by laid-back ambient house emanating from the DJ booth, you and your friends have polished off plates of ceviche, tacos, tortillas and black cod, washing them down with pisco- and mescal-based cocktails. It’s been perfect, and you’d be happy to linger. Indeed, as the next part of the evening calls — a move to a club or a bar — your heart sinks.

The thought of corralling everyone together, collecting coats and bags, arranging transport for 10 of you to get to a club, then the inevitable queue… If only you didn’t have to move, if only someone could just, well, bring the club to you…

Then, it happens — the lights get a bit lower, the music gets a bit louder and more upbeat. A few people get up and they’re dancing, but the people who don’t want to dance are just sitting round the table, drinking and chatting.

No Ubers, night buses or rain-sodden treks across town needed.

Imran Amed, Katie Hillier, Edie Campbell, Derek Blasberg and Alexa Chung attend the Marc Jacobs Beauty dinner at the Club at Park Chinois
Dave Benett/Getty Images for Mar

This isn’t some utopian future, this is MNKY HSE (pronounced Monkey House and no, I don’t know what happened to the vowels either), the new venture on the site of Dover Street Wine Bar that puts all the elements of a good night out — bar, restaurant, nightclub — under a single roof.

‘It isn’t just a restaurant that does music, or a bar that does food. We wanted to create somewhere that was strong on all three fronts,’ explains Yann Chevris, the general manager. He’s spent more than 20 years in the industry working with names such as Alain Ducasse, Joel Robuchon and Nobu Matsuhisa, but describes MNKY HSE as a totally new proposition. ‘We’ve flown in an amazing chef [Pablo Peñalosa Nájera, formerly of the Four Seasons in Bogotà and the acclaimed Morimoto in Mexico City] to oversee an innovative Latin American menu, we’ve got a bar serving up some really impressive cocktails, and a schedule of international and resident DJs taking charge of the music.’

MNKY HSE’s opulent top floor.

It’s already played host to a post-Frieze crowd including Jay Jopling, Andre Balazs and Dallas Austin. ‘The feedback so far has been fantastic. There’s a really good vibe all night and people like the fact that once they’re through the door, we can just take care of their whole night.’

It is far from the only place in town taking this approach. From Albert’s in Kensington, a new private members club founded by the people behind Boujis and Raffles, to Coya, the Peruvian restaurant and member’s club in Mayfair that has plans to open a second London site later this year, and next month’s hottest opening Sumosan Twiga, a three-floor edifice on Sloane Street serving a fusion of Japanese and Italian food alongside DJs and dancing until 2am — it’s all about the all-in-one experience, catering to Londoners who want a big night out but without the hassle.

MNKY HSE’s artfully presented octopus starter,

‘If you’re hopping between several venues, you lose the rhythm of an evening,’ says Sanjay Dwivedi of the Coya group. ‘People come for drinks, but don’t stay for dinner, or decide they don’t want to stand in the cold for half an hour waiting to get into a club.’

And, as nightlife impresario Nick House (of the American-themed cabaret bar and restaurant Steam and Rye near Bank and Park Lane’s Drama nightclub) points out, booking a table for dinner doesn’t just cut out queuing in the cold, it also guarantees you entry. ‘You see this a lot at high-end places in the South of France and Ibiza where people who don’t want to be at the mercy of the whims of the door bitch circumnavigate the issue by getting in there early for dinner.’

But even those who could be guaranteed entry to pretty much anywhere in London are fans of one-stop-shop socialising. When Marc Jacobs threw a party to celebrate the launch of his beauty range at London Fashion Week earlier this year, he didn’t want to shepherd the likes of Naomi Campbell, Georgia May Jagger, Beth Ditto and Alexa Chung from dinner at Nobu to dancing at Mahiki. Instead he booked them all into Park Chinois in Mayfair, where a Chinese banquet can melt into cabaret and clubbing until dawn.

The basement at Park Chinois.

High-end establishments do not have the monopoly on the trend. Ridley Road Market Bar in Dalston looks like a makeshift workers’ canteen, but it’s running a slick operation: the bar is catered by local legends the Slice Girls, who cook £5 pizzas in a vast wood-fired oven, while dishabille Hackney kids dance till the small hours on the chequered floor at the other end of the bar. Voodoo Rays on Kingsland Road is a pizza restaurant that in reality operates like a club: on a Saturday night it’s a cross-section of people eating pizza, slurping Margaritas and dancing around the tall tables. And Hackney Wick’s Night Tales residency was the roaring success of the summer, a sprawling network of food stalls, cocktail bars and micro dance floors. It had your whole night covered.

So what’s behind this seismic change on the club scene? ‘The 2003 Licensing Act relaxed things,’ says Charlie Gilkes, a founder of royal favourite Bunga Bunga, the bar-cum-pizzeria-cum-nightclub that was at the vanguard of this growing trend, and this autumn is set to expand with a huge new Bunga Bunga in Covent Garden. ‘Before that pubs would close at 11pm and the only option to continue your night was a nightclub. Since then, London’s developed a real bar scene, and people have started to wonder why they’re going to a club, and paying to get in when actually they’d rather carry on sitting and talking. These all-in-one venues give them the best of all worlds.’

You might expect operators to miss the traditional nightclub door charge, but that’s offset by longer opening hours, and it’s easier to get a licence for places that serve food as well as booze, so this sort of set-up even keeps London’s licensing authorities happy.

Peruvian restaurant and members’ club, Coya

‘They far prefer it when a venue is serving food rather than just alcohol,’ says Sumosan Twiga’s general manager, Massimo Montone. ‘If people are sitting down, capacity is smaller, so there are fewer people going into and out of a venue for its size. As a result, the impact on the surrounding area is diminished.’

Adwoa Aboah and Georgia May Jagger at Park Chinois
Dave Benett/Getty Images for Mar

It’s basically a win-win-win scenario. But isn’t there something a bit lacking in glamour about dancing around dirty plates with the smell of steak — or whatever — lingering in the air? Gilkes says it’s easier when a venue has more than one floor, and that it’s about reading the crowd and using lights and music to move people mentally from a restaurant to a club space. ‘You have to take people on a journey throughout the evening — and even throughout the week. On a Monday night Bunga Bunga feels like a local neighbourhood pizzeria, whereas on Friday it’s more of a raucous, buzzy bar that serves pizzas.’

He thinks we’re only really at the start of one-stop-shop socialising and is predicting that the next wave of venues will incorporate entertainment. And not just any entertainment. ‘People want immersive theatre — look at the success of You Me Bum Bum Train and Punchdrunk,’ he says. ‘In London people always want more. They want something they can share on social media that’s different to the cookie-cutter, copycat norm. And when the news is depressing, they want escapism.’

Drinks, dinner, dancing and escapism all under one roof — we’ve seen the future of Saturday nights, and we’re excited.

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