A careful parody: Noble Rot Soho reviewed

Noble Rot sits in Greek Street, Soho, on the site of the old Gay Hussar, which squatted here from 1953 like a rebuke. Some people loved this Hungarian ‘left-wing’ restaurant, with its terrible food, its library of Labour-themed political biographies, its raging cartoons and fond memories of Harold Wilson. But you can’t eat political biographies — not if you have taste. An attempt to save it by a ‘Goulash Collective’ failed, because the Gay Hussar was a themed restaurant whose theme — a sort of politicised London Dungeon — ran out. In an exquisite metaphor, it closed in 2018, at the height of Jeremy Corbyn’s self-hating — and self-thwarted — grasp for power.

Now, instead, we have Noble Rot, the second of that name; the first is in Lamb’s Conduit Street, Bloomsbury. I love this name because it is ambivalent: noble rot is a fungal infection that afflicts grapes. If managed carefully, it produces wines of great sweetness and depth.