Travel

Culture club: Behind London’s sexiest doors

LouLou’s is as exclusive as it gets in London.

LouLou’s is as exclusive as it gets in London. (Getty Images for Pace London)

HAUTE LIST: La Bodega Negra (right) sizzled on Halloween. Loulou’s (left) and its giraffe are lookers. (
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English life often involves a series of unlabeled doors. Strolling around Mayfair, you never know what is behind door No. 1 or door No. 2. But that is exactly the point. No one wants you to know the answer unless you have been invited.

Members’ clubs from Soho House to the new Loulou’s, located just off Berkeley Square, often dominate London nightlife. But you know what’s just as alluring as an unmarked door? A deceptively marked one.

La Bodega Negra — think of it as Serge Becker’s London version of La Esquina — has a glowing entrance that disguises the restaurant as a sex shop. Once you get inside the Soho hot spot, with décor inspired by Luis Buñuel, you might find scenesters like Kate Moss and One Direction’s Harry Styles at tables full of tequila-infused cocktails and street-style tacos. But don’t plan on just strolling on in. Even though it’s not a members’ club, if you aren’t dressed to their liking, you might find the staff unable to locate your table.

Other fancy London Town itineraries include grabbing drinks at Cut at the Dorchester Hotel in Mayfair, followed by dinner nearby at Scott’s Restaurant, known for its oyster selection. (Scott’s has been sizzling for years; Moss celebrated her 33rd birthday here in 2007.) Also in Mayfair: Umu, with its Kyoto kaiseki menu, tops the charts as one of the most scrumptious and expensive dining experiences the city has to offer. And the international set is flocking to Moscow mega-restaurateur Arkady Novikov’s first London restaurant, Novikov, which serves Asian, Italian and Russian bites in different areas of its Mayfair location. Over in Knightsbridge, New York transplant Mari Vanna is also a hit with globe-trotting power players, thanks to its Russian fare.

But if you’re really part of that Art Basel, Courchevel, Cannes, Ibiza, Abu Dhabi circuit, you’ll probably also be spending some time in those members’ clubs. Loulou’s, which offers both dining and nightlife, is rolling off everyone’s tongue as the place to be. Impresario Robin Birley, who named the club after his fashion muse of a cousin Loulou de la Falaise, is following the footsteps of his father, Mark, the man behind renowned members’ club Annabel’s on Berkeley Square. With designs from interior stylist Rifat Ozbek and an astounding $50 million budget, Loulou’s is a decadent, multicolored, multifabricated, multicultural fantasy land that includes a stuffed giraffe you’ll see when you enter the Madagascan Bar.

Just a couple blocks away on Piccadilly is Coya, created by Arjun Waney, the restaurateur behind Zuma, La Petite Maison and the Arts Club. Both a restaurant/bar and a members’ club, Coya has been getting major buzz for its contemporary Peruvian cuisine and Pisco bar. The private members-only area is designed with both an Incan palette and metallic finishes — ancient meets modern. The menu is headed up by chef Sanjay Dwivedi, who worked in the kitchens of Le Caprice and the Ivy, spent a year traveling around South America and cooked at Astrid Y Gaston in Lima.

On the other side of town, Soho House — which launched in London in 1995 and has successfully expanded around the world thanks to the efforts of founder Nick Jones — is still going strong at its Shoreditch outpost. With its rooftop swimming pool, bowling alley and members-only bar and restaurant, there’s a relaxed cool vibe that gives East London’s movers and shakers a place to call home away from home.