The idea of drinking in hidden establishments, like Speakeasies, to evade the frigid embrace of the law has existed for around 200 years, when statewide prohibition was first introduced in Maine. Today, prohibition is a mere aberration in the timeline, but self-aggrandizing concepts of dining in the form of “Speakeasies” are undergoing a re-emergence, as chic dining or wining venues where the concept of a table reservation is reinvented and hidden behind a slick concealed entrance.
Allow this to segue into Sole Club, the combined chippy and restaurant by Nico Simeone, of Six By Nico’s fame. Upon entering the chippy portion of the restaurant, you are instructed by the booking email to skip the queue and enter the restaurant through what is described as a “now famous fridge”. As expected, this is not a functional piece of industrial apparatus that must be moved to allow the diner to enter through a crack in the wall. Instead, it is merely an ajar door hastily stacked with pink aluminum cans, dented by their year of perching on the wildly swinging “fridge”. Clearly, someone correctly thought that this superfluous doorway would go viral.
This is all quite a shame, because the restaurant doesn’t need to hanker for publicity with gimmicky stunts like the hidden door. Its interior décor is on point. The service is attentive and rapid. Their dishes are, for the most part, simply delightful. Yet, despite the clearly pleasant and efficient concept (Sole Club shares a kitchen with the takeaway chippy, which serves many of the same items you can get as part of the Small Plates menu), the restaurant feels like it stretches too far in an attempt to pleasure the audience, which only causes the concept to come back and bite itself from the behind.
The epitome of this is how much Sole Club likes feedback, apparently thriving on the customer satisfaction survey. Once the meal is done, diners are presented a mobile device which begs them to rate every aspect of the restaurant, then every item on the bill (including the optional donation to a cancer charity and the sparkling water). After this, they still have the temerity to email you another survey after the booking has lapsed, asking you for even more opinions and a public review. All of this serves to devalue the experience, as it seems that it is not the diner that should be indebted to the restaurant for the fine meal, but the restaurant to the diner for their patronage; like that one aggravating friend constantly asking whether you’re mad.
If you are able to look past the odd start and the irritating end to this seafood themed escapade and crack the shell open, the meat inside is scrumptious. Food is served once it is ready from the kitchen (“tapas style”, the waiter tells me), and for £20, you get three dishes from their Small Plates menu. Accompanying me through this journey are goldfish, dimly lit by the restaurant’s broody red lighting and ensconced in glass blocks, and a cut of real salmon limply dangling from a hook in a real refrigerator. “It’s a real fish”, the waiter tells the diners beside me. “If you order the Salmon Pastrami, the chef takes you down to slice it.”
Ominous.
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