Quo Vadis is the restaurant in the house where Marx wrote Das Kapital, and today it is full of tulips. I always expect Soho restaurants to house crackheads and refugees from Esquire, their bloody hands echoing the streets that smell equally of dirt and soap, like a man who wants to wash but finds he can’t. I have hated Soho since I saw a man punch his way out of a brothel and a teenage prostitute buy a cuddly toy that was bigger than she was, in a ghastly montage of the free market. I don’t know why people come to Soho, except in novels. I prefer Kew Gardens but I am old now; my Soho moment has passed.
Anyway, Quo Vadis is what I suppose you should call an oasis in these small, neat streets that nonetheless see so much pain or, if you want something slightly less prosaic, vomiting.
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