Annabel's London: Inside the legendary revamped club
Back in the 1960s, had you idly mentioned that a Mexican was arriving at Annabel’s, members of the high-rolling members’ club might have expected to see a playboy fresh in from the baccarat tables of Acapulco, a Zapata moustache curling above his lip and two starlets on his arm. But this is the new Annabel’s – a different club for a different age, as one former regular describes it – and the Latin American in question is its restaurant, headed by a chef fresh in from the flame-licked hobs of Mexico City’s hottest contemporary restaurant, Pujol.
Opening this spring, Annabel’s is just two doors down from the original on Berkeley Square but a world away from the place Mark Birley opened in 1963, named after his then wife and scooped out of the basement of the Clermont Club so its aristocratic clientele had somewhere to wet their whistle. This incarnation occupies an entire Palladian-style townhouse and garden, and has been tricked out in a garden theme by Stockholm-born Martin Brudnizki, who is quite possibly the hardest-working man in interior design right now (he’s just completed the University Arms hotel in Cambridge and The Coral Room at The Bloomsbury).
As for the decor, well, as Liberace might have said, Annabel’s just slipped out to put on something more spectacular. Flowers bloom on all sides, in murals and in silk across the ceiling of the ladies’ powder room; tigers, elephants, owls and parrots peek out of carpets and walls. There are two floor-to-ceiling chandeliers that once illuminated Audrey Hepburn in Paris When It Sizzles. A winged unicorn has alighted on the stairs, a hot-air balloon above it just in case. In the basement, a Garden of Eden serpent uncoils on the nightclub wall and columns are clad as gilt-edged palm trees. It has all the texture and colour of a Victorian Christmas card, but also conjures the leafy 18th-century grottoes of the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens, where fashionable courtiers gathered for masquerades and after-dark dalliances.
Right at the top of the house is the restaurant. No one really went to Annabel’s purely for the food. Although its founder was no slouch when it came to the menu, which in the 1960s was best read with a copy of Larousse Gastronomique to hand. Birley asked probably the foremost expert there was for advice: his friend Elizabeth David, who came back with detailed annotations such as ‘Don’t let’s have any more dishes with names like Scampis Frit and Cold Pea Soup (sounds like essence of London fog)’ and ‘I wonder what impression the menu makes on customers who come in half-sloshed at 1.30am?’
Now guests will be able to order playful dishes of eel on corn cake, avocado with green-bean tahini and habanero ash, mussels dashed with guajillo chilli oil – whether they turn up half-sloshed at 1.30am or 1.30pm. Chef Jorge Dorbecker, known as Coko, grew up in central Mexico, a land of giant tamales and fermented cactus fruit. His menu will elevate street food to a social high – a clever choice now that London foodies are on nodding terms with authentic Mexicana at recent arrivals such as Ella Canta, Breddos and El Pastór. As for what to wear, while the original dress-code insisted on a jacket and tie, Annabel’s will now let in denim and trainers before 7pm. But not sports shoes ‘that look as if they’ve actually been used to play sports’. Or denim that is holey or deemed distressed. That would surely have been a step too far.
Address: Annabel's, 46 Berkeley Square, Mayfair, London W1J 5AT
Telephone: +44 20 3915 4046
Website: annabels.co.uk
Timber flooring, a sealed copper-leaf ceiling, leather armchairs and tile-topped tables in the Mexican Bar.
The Rose Room is inspired by an English country garden brimming with birds and animals.
The Jungle Bar at Annabel's.
Annabel's nightclub.
The leaf-trimmed, animal-printed bar.