Walking into this crowded and clattering restaurant for the first time in more than 30 years, two things strike me almost immediately: 1) it seems to be largely unchanged and 2) the prices have scarcely risen.
I can’t claim to have tried every wine list in Soho, but I can tell you with certainty that this is the first time in a very long time that I have seen a glass of wine for under £5 in the West End. But, incredibly, here it starts at £4.50 – with cocktails from £8.
The restaurant is Pollo, as it’s still popularly known, or La Porchetta Pollo Bar as the sign outside calls it. It crams 100 covers on to two floors at the eastern end of Old Compton Street, just behind the Cambridge Theatre, in Soho.
Between 1987, when I was first introduced to it, and 1994, by which time I felt I had outgrown it, I must have eaten here 50 times. Walking in again after all these years feels like stepping back in time to my late teens. The clientele seems like the same crowd as then, only adjusted for three decades of fashion shifts. They are predominantly under 25, in groups rather than couples, apparently here more to share loud conversation than to linger over fine food.
There’s a memorable Woody Allen joke in Annie Hall: ‘Two elderly women are at a Catskill mountain resort, and one of them says: “The food at this place is terrible.” The other replies: “I know – and such small portions”.’ The food at Pollo more or less reverses this equation: the portions are enormous, the prices are small, and although it may not win awards any time soon, it’s certainly considerably better than terrible. Which is presumably why the place is typically very, very busy – so much so that it’s routine to have to wait for a table. But then it always was this way: Pollo was not taking bookings some decades before that was commonplace.
The reason for my return after such a long break was that it was Number Two Son’s selected location for a family meal for his recent birthday. It was a natural choice for him as it’s lately become his favourite London venue. He’s working in a pub around the corner, on Charing Cross Road, and comes in all the time – in groups with friends or alone before or after shifts (it’s open until almost midnight). And as the person who would be paying, I wasn’t arguing with his choice.
As we are seated, closer examination reveals that, despite that instant sensation of recognition, Pollo is not exactly the same. In my days as a regular it only served pasta, but since incorporating the La Porchetta brand (from what was, briefly, a small family-owned chain of pizzerias in north London) in 2003, it has added pizza too. And, soon after that small rebranding following a takeover by a family connected to that La Porchetta brand, there was a complete refit. Out went the 1950s fittings, notably the oxblood leatherette booths which characterised the basement, and in came more conventional and portable tables and chairs and a snazzier sign above the door. The atmosphere, though, is unaltered.
It’s like being on holiday somewhere much cheaper than the UK. The food, calorie-for-calorie, could not have been any more expensive than eating at Pret
Between our party of four, we order two starters, four mains, one bottle and two single glasses of wine, two Aperol spritzes the size of goldfish bowls, and one dessert. Even after they’ve added 10 per cent service charge, the bill for all this is just £128. It’s like being on holiday somewhere much cheaper than the UK. The food, calorie-for-calorie, could not have been any more expensive than eating at Pret, or taking home a Charlie Bigham’s from Waitrose. But Pollo was a good deal more fun than either. And then, as a final flourish, when they learned we were there to celebrate a birthday, they threw in four glasses of limoncello for a toast, on the house.
Within walking distance of Piccadilly Circus, this kind of pricing is not normal. For contrast, at the brasserie opposite Pollo, the cheapest glass of wine is £9 – exactly double. And it rises steeply from there. That is normal. Pollo’s Anglo-Italian owners manage to suppress their prices by keeping the tempo up. There’s no lingering over courses. The food you have ordered comes out pronto. You eat up, drink up and clear out – and another group takes your place almost immediately.
When I shared my experience of returning I was amazed by just how many peers in my age group also seem to have spent many nights in their late teens or early twenties at 20 Old Compton Street. It was where new arrivals in London flocked – and apparently still do.
Yet apart from regularly rocking up on those ‘Cheap Eats’ listings beloved of Time Out and others, it attracts little press in its own right. Most of the attention for Italians in Soho is hogged by a place 50 yards around the corner from Pollo, on Frith Street: the famous Bar Italia. And admittedly that’s both more chic and more historic: it’s been in the same family since 1949 and is a staple in film and TV. But Pollo is almost as venerable, having been serving food on the same site since 1952. And what it may lack in style it makes up for in atmosphere.
The alternative places we went to in those days when Pollo was too crowded to get in are all long gone – Stockpot on Old Compton Street (closed 2015), Gaby’s on Charing Cross Road (closed 2018), Café Emm on Frith Street (closed circa 2010). As I bemoaned recently, there is a tendency in the area for things to be shut down by greedy landlords even when they are demonstrably popular and successful. In that context, Pollo’s survival largely unchanged does feel a small miracle. It has surely now qualified as a Soho institution itself.
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