It looks like an over-decorated gallery caff, every nuance of loucheness syringed out of the place. You can almost smell the Hirst artworks increasing in value
To this lassie from the sticks, the original Pharmacy in Notting Hill represented the dizziest heights of metropolitan glamour. Even after Madonna and Bowie had moved on, when the white furniture was a little scuffed and the staff’s Prada hospital gowns had been given too many hot washes, it was still the most extraordinary restaurant I’d ever seen: shimmering silver wallpaper, walls of cabinets peppered with individually designed “drugs”, the effect almost (how apt) hallucinogenic. The food? Not a clue. In best provincial form, we got howlingly drunk and stole a set of keys (“They might be original Damien Hirsts!”). I think the pals still have them, if anyone wants them back.
Now it’s a branch of Marks & Spencer and former enfant terrible Hirst has gone all establishment, donating his “secret” portrait of the Queen to the Government Art Collection. His new gallery in Vauxhall, heralded as the capital’s latest “arts district”, is undeniably £25m-worth of impressive, complete with shop and – hello! – Pharmacy 2.
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