Untouched gem: the diminutive upstairs dining room
(Picture: Daniel Hambury/Stella Pictures)By design, necessity and nomenclature, newspapers deal with the now — but lingering strikes, an enervated pound and Margaret Thatcher’s name coming up every other minute mean today’s Standard comes to you from 1985, and as such was written on napkins in the boozer, fag in hand (not really; I couldn’t find any Silk Cuts).
And so to Soho’s Andrew Edmunds. Actually, that’s not why, but let’s leave it for now. Edmunds sits over two floors — three, if you count the Academy club upstairs — next to a print shop likewise named for its founder, which is handy for both a spot of post-lunch art, or for storing, say, an idiot diner’s unwieldy Brompton. Most things are unwieldy here: Edmunds’ ground floor is a famously cramped thing; one flowing walkway to the back kitchen, tables washed up either side, white-clothed and candlelit. Such diminutive dimensions and their consequences — supper can involve plenty of brushed knees, avoiding eye contact would require a blindfold (steady on) — mean the place long ago picked up a reputation for being romantic. It is a restaurant of first dates, of anniversaries, of affairs. Dark green downstairs is only slightly bigger, no less dangerous. What is offered here — besides the food and drink and the chance of an unexpected pregnancy — is atmosphere. Fun tremors through the air as music might. You will hear secrets cheerfully spilled at volume, running-on laughter only ever tamed by a cough, idle attempts at chatting someone up.
