Social distancing in Soho: The French House reviewed

London is gasping — so where to go but Soho, which is so good at despair? It is often necrotic but now, of the central London districts, it feels the most alive. Mayfair is a pretty corpse — I pity the luxury services industry, for its clients are in hiding — but Soho’s restaurants have spread themselves on to the streets and it feels as interesting as it used to, a place that has found its purpose again. It has been over–gentrified — the renovation of Raymond’s Revue Bar is horrifying, because they closed the revue bar and kept the signage — but now it feels giddy and important: a home for the insensible and the brave.

Soho has known worse things, after all. In the Broad (now Broadwick) Street cholera outbreak of 1854, 127 people died in three days; by the end 616 were dead. All London is built on bones, but you feel it here, and that is why you feast.