Franco's

Franco's opened on Jermyn Street in 1945, among the first Italian restaurants in London, and has held the same address through eighty years of St James's life. The Hambro family, who own Wiltons a few doors along, took it over in 2005 and gave it the polished, clubbable look it wears today: warm lighting, close-set white-clothed tables and a bar that fills from breakfast onward with the neighbourhood's tailors, dealers and diplomats.

Private dining runs across the lower ground floor, refurbished in 2023 and taken whole or divided. The Wine Cellar seats sixteen at a single table at the back, lined with bottles; the Mirror Room holds thirty at the front, over two tables. Opened up, the full floor seats fifty. The kitchen sends the same classic Italian cooking that made the room's name, and it stays quiet enough to talk across.

For a larger evening the whole restaurant is available exclusively — its two floors, bar and terrace together seat up to a hundred and twenty-five, or hold two hundred standing. It trades on settled, grown-up confidence rather than on being a scene, which is much of the appeal for a considered dinner or a private celebration.