Quo Vadis (restaurant)
| Quo Vadis | |
|---|---|
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| Restaurant information | |
| Established | 1926 |
| Current owner(s) | Sam and Eddie Hart |
| Food type | Modern British |
| Dress code | None |
| Street address | Dean Street, Soho |
| City | London, W1 |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Other information | Nearest station: Tottenham Court Road
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| Website | quovadissoho.co.uk |
Quo Vadis is a restaurant and private club in Soho, London. It primarily serves modern British food. It was founded in 1926 by an Italian named Pepino Leoni and has passed through numerous owners since then, including celebrity chef Marco Pierre White, and is currently owned by Sam and Eddie Hart, also the owners of Barrafina. The restaurant is named after the Latin phrase Quo vadis?, meaning "Where are you going?"
The restaurant occupies numbers 26–29 Dean Street. Nos. 26–8 form a uniform group built in c. 1734 by the carpenter John Nolloth, of St James's, and No. 29 was built in c. 1692. The sculptor Joseph Nollekens was born in the latter house in 1737; a later resident was the composer François-Hippolyte Barthélémon.Karl Marx and his family lived in two small rooms at No. 28, described as an "old hovel", between 1851 and 1856; his residency is commemorated by a London County Council blue plaque. It was due to the association with Marx that numbers 26–28 were made a Grade I listed building on 14 January 1970.
The restaurant was founded in 1926 by Pepino Leoni. When Leoni originally opened Quo Vadis in 1926, it only occupied No. 27. He purchased the property, with the aid of a bank loan for £800. Its moniker was alighted on after Leoni saw a billboard in Leicester Square advertising a film of the same name. Quo Vadis is Latin for "Where art you going?". The cinematic epic, adapted from Henryk Sienkiewicz's classic 1896 novel Quo Vadis, was the highest-grossing film in 1951.
In 1996, the restaurant was bought by Marco Pierre White and Damien Hirst, and featured paintings by the artist as well as a bar designed by him. The pair later parted company after a public falling out, following which White replaced Hirst's paintings with some of his own.
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