In London, they used to say you were no more than five feet away from a rat. Nowadays they say you're no more than five feet away from a members club. I hope the rats have blazers.
It's even more accurate, however, to say that you're currently no more than five metres away from a lifestyle journalist remarking on how many new members' clubs there are in London at the moment. And I should know, because I've built a small cottage industry from this trend-that-keeps-on-giving — albeit a cottage industry with a beautiful mid-century honesty bar and a no-laptop policy after five. Here are the new ones that will actually be good.
The Pembroke was announced at the end of last year in much the same way that the Royal Family proclaims a new birth, I'm told — with a note pinned to a grand front door and presumably not an interview with Emily Maitlis. Which is fitting, because the handsome site overlooks Charlie Three's back garden from a towering townhouse in Belgravia, which is sort of like Mayfair if Mayfair was a bit like Chelsea. At a hush-hush unveiling of certain club quarters last month, a giant cake in the shape of the building was sliced into by the debonair host for guests to eat — and yet everyone also somehow went home with a slice from a separate sponge. I'm sure there's a metaphor in there somewhere. I just enjoyed the cake.
This new Mayfair establishment came up with the name first, and then tracked down the address to match — which isn't true, but is the sort of thing that the LouLou Groupe might be able to pull off (you will know them for their Paris and Ramatuelle outposts of LouLou, as well as the historic Le Flandrin in the 16th arrondissement). It's a good name, though — one of those that sounds like it's been around forever, and which will no doubt roll off the tongue of its members henceforth in a series of knowing contractions: "Let's pop over to sixteen after this"; "I met him at one-six, actually"; "Charlie's, anyone?". The club itself will span around 25,000-square-feet of a handsome Grade II* listed townhouse just off Berkeley Square, and though there's a public brasserie on the ground floor, the upper reaches will be open only to what they're calling 'Les Amis', with whom — and I made this very clear in my GCSE oral exam — I have always enjoyed playing football in the park, actually.
Up-and-coming area Notting Hill has now got its first proper members club, which now means its residents never really need to leave except to go to The Cotswolds, which they also recently invented. Celeste is beautifully done, inhabiting the pleasing Georgian townhouse that once housed Beach Blanket Babylon but without being haunted. The conservatory out the back is one of the loveliest light-traps in London, the service is superb, and the food is excellent.
Condor is a "golf club in the city", which is a bit like bringing "the mountain to mohammed," or, as my friends who work in insurance like to put it, "the meeting to the pub." Developed by tour players with what looks like a quite astonishing simulator setup (the 5.8 metre high ceilings of the old Child & Co building at 1 Fleet Street ought to help), it will soon presumably also house the greatest selection of status gilets known to man when it opens in the autumn.
'Tramp Health' ought to be a contradiction in terms, such is the good-time decadence of the famous subterranean lair down on Jermyn Street, which was long known for its louche characters and colourful antics — like that time that The Who's drummer Keith Moon destroyed an ancient chandelier by swinging from it, and then strapped himself naked to the bonnet of a car outside the club the next day to protest his ban. But under its new steward, the talismanic Luca Maggiora, Tramp has developed into something much more sophisticated and considered — and so it makes a strange sort of sense that a new outpost, situated on Grosvenor Square, will put wellness front and centre. Opening in May, Tramp Health will focus on movement, nutrition, longevity, therapy and fitness, meaning members may even find they break out in a sweat.
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Issue 10
French etiquette expert Hélène Meillard may be banning “bon appétit,” but English has its own linguistic offenders. From “generational” to “you got this,” here are five phrases we could all do without this year.
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