Venues in St James's
St James’s has kept its own counsel for three centuries — Georgian clubhouses, Piccadilly hotels and dining rooms of considerable discretion, a short walk from the Palace.
St James's
Mistress of Mayfair
Mediterranean Restaurant & Bar
Up to 220 guests
A crimson, Paris-referencing restaurant and lounge below street level on St James's Street, with a fixed DJ booth on the restaurant floor and a club room after midnight. Takes 110 seated or 220 standing on exclusive hire.
St James's
Fortnum & Mason
British Restaurant
Up to 350 guests
Nine private rooms above the Piccadilly food halls, from a stone-arched crypt laid for twelve to the Diamond Jubilee Tea Salon, which takes the whole fourth floor and 350 for a reception.
St James's
Imperial Treasure
Chinese Restaurant
Up to 150 guests
A Cantonese fine-dining room in a Grade II-listed former bank on Waterloo Place, with Studio Liaigre interiors, three mezzanine private dining rooms and a full-restaurant buyout for up to 150.
St James's
Wild Honey St James
Modern European Restaurant
Up to 150 guests
Anthony Demetre's Michelin-starred modern European restaurant in a former banking hall on Pall Mall, with a private dining room, a bookshelf-lined salon and full exclusive hire.
St James's
Arlington
British Restaurant
Up to 8 guests
Jeremy King's 2024 revival of the Le Caprice site on Arlington Street — art-deco mirrors, David Bailey portraits, and a semi-private alcove for up to eight.
St James's
The Athenaeum Club
Members' Club
The 1824 club on Pall Mall, in Decimus Burton's Grade I clubhouse beneath the gilded Athena. Rooms are hired through a member.
St James's
Rockwell Bistro & Wine Bar
European Restaurant & Bar
Up to 100 guests
A wine bar and bistro off Trafalgar Square, pouring from fifteen countries under full-height trees and low gold light. Live jazz on Fridays, a guest DJ every Saturday, and 100 standing when the floor is taken whole.
St James's
Reform Club
Members' Club
Up to 250 guests
Charles Barry's Grade I palazzo on Pall Mall, where a gold-leafed library of almost 120 feet takes 250 for a reception. Hired through a member, with the whole clubhouse available on exclusive weekend hire.
St James's
Swans Bar at Maison Assouline
Cocktail Bar
Up to 120 guests
A 1922 Lutyens banking hall, now Assouline's Piccadilly flagship: a lacquered red cocktail bar on the book-lined ground floor, with the Grande Salle as a private dining room above. Receptions to 120, seated to 60.
/ About St James's ▾
St James’s was laid out from the 1660s, when Charles II granted Henry Jermyn, Earl of St Albans, the right to develop the fields beside St James’s Palace. Jermyn built an aristocratic residential quarter around St James’s Square, and the area has kept its court character ever since — the Palace remains a working royal residence, and the streets between Pall Mall and Piccadilly still read as the most establishment corner of the West End. Stone-fronted and low-built, discreet almost to a fault, St James’s wears its history without display.
St James’s is London’s clubland, and its members’ clubs are its signature event asset. White’s, founded as a chocolate house in 1693 and settled on St James’s Street since 1778, is the oldest of them; Boodle’s and Brooks’s stand close by on the same street. The art trade shares the ground — Christie’s has its saleroom on King Street, and the surrounding streets hold a concentration of upmarket art and antique dealers. Grand townhouses, club dining rooms and the Piccadilly hotels give the district settings for dinners and receptions with a formal, historic register.
Jermyn Street and St James’s Street carry the district’s tailoring and long-established shops, while its restaurants keep a similarly settled tone. Green Park spreads along the southern edge, its avenues of plane trees running down towards the Mall and Buckingham Palace, so an event here has open parkland on its doorstep. Access is straightforward: Green Park station brings the Jubilee, Piccadilly and Victoria lines, Piccadilly Circus and St James’s Park stations sit either side, and Charing Cross and Victoria termini are both within reach for national rail — an easy arrival from anywhere in the country.