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For one writer the loss of this much-loved Soho haunt was a huge blow. Tell us about your favourite spots that deserve greater appreciation – even if they have closed their doors
One cold, miserable Tuesday night earlier this year, I found myself standing forlornly on Bateman Street, Soho, a BYO bottle of red wine in my hand and no restaurant in which to drink it. Lorelei, my very favourite place, had closed down without warning.
Lorelei wasn't just another restaurant – it had become a huge part of my life since moving to London. I'd had first dates there, and second, and third. There were birthday meals, celebrations, get-togethers: countless nights out. I honestly felt, standing there, as if I could cry. In the window was a hand-written note:
NOTICE: THE LORELEI IS NOW CLOSED. THE MANAGEMENT WOULD LIKE TO THANK ALL OUR CUSTOMERS FROM THE PAST AND PRESENT FOR YOUR SUPPORT OVER THE MANY YEARS. IT HAS BEEN A PRIVILEDGE [sic] TO SERVE YOU ALL
THANKS AGAIN. BEST WISHES THE MANAGEMENT. 25TH FEB 2013
It was so unceremonious – after five years of eating there, I never got to say thank you or goodbye.
It wasn't a special restaurant by some standards – the food was good enough, but by no means gourmet – the puddings, displayed in colourful pictures on a laminated menu, came in plastic dishes straight from the freezer. Their simple old-fashioned prawn cocktail was my favourite ever though, and their pizzas were reliably tasty. And goodness the place was cheap. I don't think I ever spent more than £15 a head, always including a decent tip.
But it was about much more than food. The couple who ran it were lovely welcoming people of few words; of quiet, unspoken friendliness and twinkling eyes. Giacinto and Faye, according to London Eating, where the conversation about their closure shows that I'm not alone in my sadness. She was of partly Asian descent, beautiful, warm, quiet and unassuming. He was Italian and stayed in the kitchen, which was open-plan long before such a thing was a fashion statement. In our only proper conversation, he told me that he had grown-up children who had moved away. He pointed out to me where the greengrocer used to be on Bateman Street, and this shop and that, when they opened Lorelei in – I think – the late 1960s.
The place looked like it hadn't changed since then. It consisted of just one room, with seating at red-legged formica-topped tables for around 30 covers. There were little glass salt and pepper shakers. You sat either on long dark red banquettes or on simple wooden chairs. You walked past a big pile of bags of flour in the doorway on the way in. The room was dominated by two things – an original, faded coffee machine, and an enormous kitsch mural of the siren after whom the place was named, filling one of the wood-panelled walls, beckoning a sailing boat to its ruin.
The pièce de résistance when bringing a new friend to Lorelei was directing them to the loos. These were down a short, narrow corridor, past the open kitchen, through a door with the management's coats hanging on it, and outside to a tiny courtyard with two outhouses, one for ladies another for the gents. Outside toilets in the middle of London's glitzy West End in the 21st century: there can't have been anywhere else that offered that.
Sometimes I would be the only diner in there – me at one table, eating and reading my paper, the management at their separate tables after serving me, reading their own. At other times the place would be packed with all sorts of clientele, from the fairly poor to the dripping rich, from office workers and birthday parties to debauched, old-school Soho bohemians. I once had death-defying artist Sebastian Horsley sitting at the table just next to me (shortly before death defied him) and have spotted a well-known chef and a media executive on other occasions. I've probably been blissfully unaware of many other movers, shakers and celebrities in Lorelei. It is – sorry, was – a place where you felt part of a privileged coterie, as if you'd walked into a room where the real, old Soho was still to be found.
And with the loss of Lorelei, a little bit of Soho history vanishes. I dread the day I walk past and it is a bland, chain-owned coffee shop, or a shiny chrome-filled bar. With inside toilets.
Dear, dear management: on the off-chance you should stumble across this piece, let me take the opportunity to thank you. With love and care you created the most beautiful haven of a restaurant and I never felt anything less than delight and contentedness on each of the countless occasions on which I walked in. Thank you and goodbye. You will be sadly, deeply missed.