No one can agree on what saving Soho actually means

Restaurateurs who live and work in London’s party district find themselves caught in an ever-polarising debate between City Hall and the Soho Society

- writes Hannah Twiggs

Sadiq Khan has a message for anyone moaning about Soho’s nightlife: perhaps they should have thought about that before moving to one of London’s most bustling areas.

“Complaining about nightlife when you choose to live in Soho is like living in South Kensington and complaining about the museums,” the London mayor wrote on X, after pledging to overrule residents’ groups that object to new bars, restaurants and late licences in the capital’s nightlife districts.

Khan’s intervention followed a decision by the Soho Society, one of the area’s oldest residents’ groups, to oppose all new and renewed licences in what it says is an effort to protect a neighbourhood increasingly buckling under the weight of antisocial behaviour, noise and overcrowding.

It is an argument that has haunted Soho for decades. The area has spent decades being simultaneously celebrated and mourned: London’s bohemian beating heart and a victim of its own success. A haven for artists, actors and outsiders, but a hotbed of crime. Everyone wants to save Soho. The trouble is, nobody can quite agree on what that means.

If anyone has earned the right to an opinion on Soho, it’s Brian Clivaz of L’Escargot, the historic French restaurant that first opened in 1896. After more than a decade at the helm of it and considerably longer watching Soho evolve, unlike some commentators, Clivaz has little interest in painting W1 as either paradise or dystopia.