The Evening · Soho
Brunch is booked. After that, pick an activity, then pick your night. Two evening paths depending on whether you want to sit down and eat, or just chill to live music.
The anchor, already locked in. Roman-style wood-fired pizza, handmade pasta and endless prosecco with a resident DJ, just off Carnaby. The bubbles flow for an hour and a half from our table, so we ease out happy and well-fed in the late afternoon, ready for whatever is next.
After brunch · pick one
All in Soho, all cool and easy, perfect for the warm part of the afternoon. Just pick whichever appeals on the day.
Five compact floors of contemporary and historical photography, crisply curated, with a lovely bookshop and a cafe. Calm and cool, easy to wander and talk over. The current show is Japanese Women Photographers, From 1950s to Now. A few minutes from brunch.
The grand option. A proper Piccadilly art institution in a beautiful Burlington House setting, with major headline exhibitions, elegant rooms to drift through, and a striking courtyard. More of an occasion, and the walk down points us toward the evening end of Soho.
The wildcard, and the one I am quietly hoping you pick. You step into a vast space wrapped floor to ceiling and overhead in giant screens, with immersive digital art and sound washing over the whole room. Modern, dreamlike and genuinely jaw-dropping. It runs late, so there is no rush if we linger.
On the way to the evening, the perfect warm-day pause. A tiny, beloved Soho gelateria doing some of the best gelato and sorbet in London, blood orange, pistachio, ricotta and sour cherry. Grab a cone and keep walking. Two minutes from the music.
The evening · pick one
Two distinct moods. Option A is a lively dinner-and-funk night out. Option B is an intimate, chilled couple of hours with jazz and cocktails, no big meal.
The full night out, and a proper funk session. A table at the world-famous jazz club, dinner in front of us, while a nine-piece brass funk band tears the room up. This is the W3 Funk Sessions, high-energy and danceable, not mellow jazz, so it is the lively, let-loose option, and we stay put in one legendary room all evening. Dim lighting, candlelit cabaret tables, proper old-Soho atmosphere on Frith Street.
The intimate, lower-key choice. Down into the dark, candlelit, booth-lined basement for a couple of hours with a live jazz duo and some of the best cocktails in London. Snacks rather than a big meal, oysters, steak tartare, Welsh rarebit, so it stays light and unhurried. Romantic and easy, on Old Compton Street.
It all stays in Soho. The galleries sit just off Oxford Street and Piccadilly, with Outernet up by Tottenham Court Road, and the evening is in the heart of Soho on Frith Street and Old Compton Street. Nothing is more than about ten minutes on foot, and the later we go, the softer the evening gets.