Vittles Reviews: Why are all the girlies going to Daquise?
The tastes they are a-changin', by Simran Hans. Photographed by Michaël Protin.
Welcome back to Vittles Restaurants. A quick note: we are currently commissioning the next guide in our series of 99 Places To Eat Lunch That Aren’t Pret. If you have any lunch recommendations for Farringdon, Holborn, Covent Garden, Bloombury, Clerkenwell, Temple and Fleet Street, then email us at vittlesrestaurants@gmail.com
Today’s piece is by Simran Hans, who you might remember recently wrote about the state of the River Café podcast. Today, she visits a restaurant which is having a moment and asks: does the unlikely revival of a fancy Polish restaurant in South Kensington mark the end of an era in London dining?
Vittles Reviews is a column dedicated to critical reviews of London restaurants, normally written by Jonathan Nunn, who is away this week. You can read all the previous reviews here.
Why are all the girlies going to Daquise?
The tastes they are a-changin’, by Simran Hans
Is Daquise a thing? It’s a question I’ve spent the last few months wondering.
“What, the Polish place near the V&A?” a friend asked, surprised it was suddenly of interest. Yes, she knew it, she had been there with her in-laws. Her mother-in-law was going again next week.
A few paces from South Kensington tube station, tucked on a corner at the bottom of Exhibition Road, Daquise is London’s oldest Polish restaurant. Christine Keeler and Yevgeny Ivanov dined there during the peak of the Profumo affair. When Roman Polanski, whose father was Polish, was in the capital shooting Repulsion in 1964, he ate lunch there almost every day. Its lore is spiked with a touch of scandal: last August, The Times described it as celebrity Conservative Jeremy Clarkson’s favourite restaurant. Ever since, its burgundy facade has been all over my feed. During the last six months or so, I’ve seen photos of it on the Instagram Stories of a chef who works at Haggerston’s Towpath, a popular food stylist and the friend who photographed my wedding. A few weeks ago, I opened Instagram for the twentieth time that evening to see that the staff from Rita’s, the popular-with-the-girlies Soho restaurant, had just been to Daquise for a celebratory meal. I started to feel dragged by my algorithm. Could it be the Baader–Meinhof phenomenon? I couldn’t help but wonder, as images of a restaurant I’d previously never considered going to were served to me again and again. I kept thinking about its glowing windows and white tiles, of eating soup from one of its cosy leather banquettes.
What happens when classic restaurants – those with real history – are revived by a new scene? The girlies are always drawn to a chic, photo-ready aesthetic as well as to its food. Recent years have seen them championing the women-led (Rochelle Canteen), the women-named (Jolene) and the Cafes (Deco and Cecilia). But look at their Instagram pages and you’ll see their tastes seem to be shifting. Blackboard menus that change weekly are out, ordering a la carte is in. The poached salmon-pink table linens and retro dessert trolley at Oslo Court (est. 1968) recently received the influencer treatment from former Big Brother contestant and Boris Johnson fanboy Henry Southan. Last month, Vogue columnist Slutty Cheff hosted an event sponsored by Adidas at Sweetings, an old-school, lunch-only, fish restaurant in the City known for its Black Velvet cocktails and clientele of rich bankers. Anyone who’s ever had their spot blown up will know that to commodify the vibe is to kill it.
It was a relief, then, to find the vibe at Daquise intact.